Ravi_Alisha_SU2014



My name is Alisha. I am a ninth grade ELA teacher at the Women's Academy of Excellence in the Bronx. Technology is something that I personally don't use to its full potential, both inside and outside the classroom.

Technology in my Classroom

This year I tried to incorporate technology in my classroom as much as I could, but I experienced a paradox in the way that students responded to and used this technology. I found that many of my students were lacking basic skills that are required to efficiently use the technology. They didn't know, for example, how to save a document, or attach a document to an email. This surprised me considering that my students are considered part of the generation that grew up with technology.

On the other hand, I was able to incorporate a blog into my classroom and noticed a huge difference in student engagement. Students were much more willing to write when they were posting on the blog. I had students who had never more than two sentences writing paragraphs on their blogs. I hope to be able to learn more ways to effectively use technology in the classroom to enhance student learning, while also teaching students the technology skills that they seem to be lacking.

**ISTE Reflections and Goals ** In my classroom I immediately realized that my students worked better when other students were reading their work. In order to accommodate for this, I created a class blog using kidblog.org. Each student had their own blog pages, and other students in the class could read and comment on their pieces of writing. This was mostly used for creative writing. Students would write blog posts from the point of view of characters in novels, or short stories. This was effective for students within the classes, but I was hesitant to allow the students to make their blogs viewable to the public because of safety and privacy concerns. This hindered their ability to freely express, and receive feedback on their work. As such, my goal is to develop strategies to allow for students to engage in learning both within and outside the classroom in virtual environments.
 * 1. Facilitate and inspire student creativity and learning **

I believe that this is something that I did poorly this school year. I started off the year with the intention to share messages with students, and parents digitally but my plans were quickly derailed due to lack of resources in the school and within the student home. One piece of technology that most students, and parents have access to is a smart phone. Through this course, I hope to be able to learn to use this tool effectively to share information with both students and parents.
 * 2. Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments. **

When at school with my students I do try to model the use of technologies for learning. This occurs primarily through teaching how to effectively complete research assignments. One on one, I have often showed my students how to find other information on the Internet such as maps, videos, and resources for supplementary work in all subjects. Despite this modeling, it is difficult for my students to develop these skills because they don’t know how to find these resources when they are not at school. This summer, I hope to learn about and compile a list of resources to use in my classroom that model digital age work. I would especially like these resources to model for students the way that technology is used by professionals in work environments. This will hopefully allow my students to think about the technological skills they have and how they can be of benefit in the future.
 * 3. Model digital age work and learning. **

Due to my hesitance to use the Read/Write Web features available to me in the school year, I had very few opportunities to model digital citizenship and responsibility. Rather than address the importance of digital responsibility, our class blogs only served to restrict what students could do and share. As the Read/Write Web, specifically social media, is so important in the lives of my students I hope to be able to learn how to safely use it in my classroom. More specifically, I’d like to be able to create a lesson, or an activity to use Twitter in my classroom, in this activity, along with engaging students with the content I would like to model for students different ways that social media can be used.
 * 4. Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility. **

I did not have an opportunity to participate in any professional grown and leadership with regards to technology during this school year. Through this course I hope to learn how to make effective use of technology to enhance student learning, and in turn contribute to the learning community in my school in September. To do this, I would like to create a concise cross-curricular resource to share with my grade team. I would like this to include links to online resources, and concrete strategies to use technology in the classroom.P
 * 5. Engage in professional growth and leadership. **

__**Portfolio **__

In order to achieve my fifth goal, I have chosen to share my portfolio in the form of a Prezi. It can be found here: []