Faith+G.

I really wanted to post a picture Van Persie scoring a goal for the Netherlands against Spain in the World Cup....But my better judgement won out.

Back in 2000 I had my first experience with an E-reader…sort of. Our teacher was doing a unit on researching and writing about future technologies. That was where I heard about an E-reader. It was not called that back then. It was described as this sort of portable screen where you could store hundreds or even thousands of books, newspapers and magazines. It would also state when such technologies were expected to exist and be used by the general public. Most of the dates were for 2015, 2025, or even 2050! For the E-Reader I think the date they posted was 2015. But I wanted to become a scientist, an inventor really, so I could create these technologies sooner because I wanted to use them as soon as possible.  Flash forward roughly fifteen years to the present. I did not pursue my elementary school ambitions to take the science community by storm. Looking back, I lost interest in science because my science classes were not too engaging. At some point my interest in science and technology waned. I am not much into social media as my friends. I can go months without visiting facebook. Today I feel like a lot of the new platforms or gaining and presenting information could be really helpful and even convenient at times for myself and my class and I am interested in them but I have not really had the drive to learn about them on my own.

Initial Assessment

 I am a 5-year track student so I do not have prior experience teaching a class with a lesson plan I have prepared, so I do not have that sort of experience to reflect upon to change. I went to a high school that really gave teachers the opportunities and resources to incorporate technology. There was a spectrum of teachers who really took to incorporating technology, some more than others. Facebook, Youtube, and reading blogs or wikis sums up my technology usage. I am not someone who adds content, I just use it. I would like to begin learning more about blogs for classroom usage. As recommended in Richardson, I would like to first become familiar with creating a blog and running it before I have students do the same.

Goals

 I will establish a blog I post to weekly, geared toward high-school aged students or older, dedicated to topics in history with an emphasis on science-history connections, current issues in the media related to history, or historiography (particularly cross-cultural historiography).

Based on my understanding of the assignment and the ISTE standards my goals are as follows:

1. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity—by modeling the blog, at times in creative or innovative ways, as an entry point for students to learn more about them before starting their own. Engaging in learning with students and colleagues by learning about blogging and innovations in my subject that I keep up-to-date on through my blog.

2. Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments—Through the blog, design and develop digital-age learning experiences by giving students a trusted, age appropriate source to become familiar with the writing styles, topics, and technology around blogs as they are scaffolded to eventually write posts for a class blog or their own blog.

3. Model digital age work and learning—By creating the blog I will also be creating a sort of annotated bibliography of historical topics where I include my own opinions and analysis that I could use to keep track of articles, websites, and other digital media that I may want to use in class in the future. It will also be a relevant way to communicate information on a topic to students using a variety of digital media. It will also be a good platform to present or experiment with new kinds of digital tools.

4. Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility—by modeling cultural understanding by writing a post on a historical cross-cultural issue or cross-cultural interpretations of history. My post would include links to two different articles or other media discussing one of the varied viewpoints. My post would explain both sides of the issue respectfully. I could ultimately serve as a model on respectful reflection of differing cultures for my students in future assignments and create a starting point for dialogue on cultural understanding and global awareness.

5. Engage in professional growth and leadership—Evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning by posting on the class blog on different types of technologies that can be used in the classroom.

Link to Portfolio [|here]

__Portfolio Reflection__

I successfully established a weekly blog, geared toward high-school aged students or older, dedicated to topics in history with an emphasis on science-history connections, current issues in the media related to history, or historiography (particularly cross-cultural historiography).

Based on my understanding of the assignment and the ISTE standards my goals are as follows:

1. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity—by modeling the blog, at times in creative or innovative ways, as an entry point for students to learn more about them before starting their own. Engaging in learning with students and colleagues by learning about blogging and innovations in my subject that I keep up-to-date on through my blog.

Outcome: [completely] I really enjoyed working on my blog, much to my surprise, and will continue to post on it weekly. In addition to the blog, I also created a video on Movie Maker. After I created my powerpoint with audio for Module 6: Copyright Clarity, that I couldn’t for the life of me, get on Youtube because I was using Microsoft Office 2007, which, apparently, is really difficult to get Powerpoints up, especially when compared to Microsoft Office 2010. Right after I submitted the assignment I downloaded Movie Maker and played around with it that night. So around 1 am, I wound up creating a little picture montage of some selfies set to music. It felt a lot easier putting it together because there wasn’t the pressure of it being an assignment looming over my head. It was a better experience than I thought. I’m really proud of myself for doing this. It wasn’t even on my goals but I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and was rewarded. I still feel like there is more I can learn about Movie Maker.

2. Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments—Through the blog, design and develop digital-age learning experiences by giving students a trusted, age appropriate source to become familiar with the writing styles, topics, and technology around blogs as they are scaffolded to eventually write posts for a class blog or their own blog.

Outcome:[completely]I feel a lot more comfortable using a blog and even using it in the classroom. I particularly found the blog on advances in technology for archaeology a lot of fun. It was basically an annotated bibliography of websites, which the Richardson text had recommended starting off with. My first blog post on the Burr-Hamilton Duel was a bit more work than I planned. I really stretched myself in the Senkaku-Diaoyu Island dispute, toward the end. It was basically an informative essay, which really pushed my limits time-wise. I feel that by my last blog post I was able to properly cite the pictures I used after reading the Renee Hobbs book. I used pictures from Creative Commons. I had used those pictures earlier from Wikipedia but I did not cite them properly. I still feel there’s still more that I could learn about the Wordpress platform that could help me in the future that I anticipate learning about.

3. Model digital age work and learning—By creating the blog I will also be creating a sort of annotated bibliography of historical topics where I include my own opinions and analysis that I could use to keep track of articles, websites, and other digital media that I may want to use in class in the future. It will also be a relevant way to communicate information on a topic to students using a variety of digital media. It will also be a good platform to present or experiment with new kinds of digital tools.

Outcome: [completely] In addition to successfully creating the blog, including using it as a sort of annotated bibliography, I also experimenting with other technologies such as twitter. What also wasn’t on my goals, but what I ended up trying was creating a twitter account. In the past I figured it would just be a hassle to keep on top of and I figured the only reason people went on twitter was to follow celebrities like Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian, not people I’m interested in. Surprise, I wound up following a bunch of great news sources like the AP, New York Times, Wired Magazine, as well as institutions like the Smithsonian. That was actually really great to keep updated with the latest news and the latest in history and science. I even sent out my first tweets ever during the Developing Digital Literacies workshop.

4. Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility—by modeling cultural understanding by writing a post on a historical cross-cultural issue or cross-cultural interpretations of history. My post would include links to two different articles or other media discussing one of the varied viewpoints. My post would explain both sides of the issue respectfully. I could ultimately serve as a model on respectful reflection of differing cultures for my students in future assignments and create a starting point for dialogue on cultural understanding and global awareness.

Outcome: [completely]Both the Senkaku-Diaoyu post and the Hamilton-Burr duel on my blog discussed two opposing sides in a controversy respectfully, and in the case of the former, discussed both sides of different cultures. I would like to use the blog to discuss different cultures or conflicting views on history.

5. Engage in professional growth and leadership—Evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning by posting on the class blog on different types of technologies that can be used in the classroom.

Outcome:[completely] I posted on the class blog on my assigned dates to post. Researching technology to use in class gave me the opportunity to look deeper into technologies I already knew and to look up other technologies to use. I knew there were much more educational applications to technologies I had already known about, but I had no idea how many different ways they could be used. Like learning about how students were using 3-D printers in a science class to design tools for special needs students. I also knew that teachers posted class ideas on Pinterest but I had no idea the other applications they used for it, some of which included students creating Pinterest pages. I enjoyed reading others posts as well. I had no idea there were so many tools out there for teachers, many of which were free. Best of all, most seemed really, really helpful to teaching and were relatively hassle-free. I particularly liked Mail Merge post. I never thought something like that existed or was that easy to use. I definitely want to look more into some of them more in the near future. I even took a free 3-D printing class at my library-- which I never thought I would be tech savvy enough to do-- and it wasn’t even one of my goals.

Overall Goals Grade:

Who am I as a technology user? At the beginning of this class I shyed away from technology. I still prefer reading a paper book to an e-reader, and I still like to print out my papers to edit before I submit it. But now I’m more opening to putting in the time to learning the technologies that could make my teaching more organized, simplified, and applicable to students and the future they will be living in.

How can technology improve teaching and learning? I’ve always known technology can improve teaching and learning. It has always been a tool to help explain ideas and it’s a place for the exchange and spread of ideas. But with the knowledge of the Web 2.0 I now know the exchange of ideas is something a student can exchange with another person rather than simply be on the receiving end of major websites. It can also be used to express one’s creativity through a variety of media-- from photography, writing, to film.

What digital skills must students develop to succeed in school and beyond?

What technologies they are taught today will probably be obsolete by the time they get through college. But working with technology will make learning new technologies less intimidating and more easy in the future. That skill of adaptation, coupled with communication and creativity will help them to succeed beyond school.

Future Goals:

I have a lot more ideas for using movie maker in the future such as giving book reviews on my favorite history books and historical fiction books. I’d also like to post pictures with commentary of places I’ve been that have historical relevance such as Washington D.C., Boston, New York City, cliff dwellings in Colorado, etc. One thing I can’t wait to do is discuss the caste system in India to go with pictures of leprosy colonies I worked in and some of the traditional jobs I took pictures of, such as builders and stone carvers. Eventually Movie Maker and similar tools are something I could see myself using in the classroom.

I also would like to learn more about e-books. Growing up I always found reading fictional works to help learn facts for school, like historical fiction novels. I would like to write short stories that my students to turn to to learn facts and terms in anthropology, archaeology and other areas of study that fall under social studies.

Lastly, I’d like to create an RSS feed.

Not really relevant to our goals, but I have to say now I’m also a huge fan of dropbox. There really isn’t a day that I haven’t used it. Before I had heard the name but never really knew what it was about. So I’m really glad we were required to use it because it’s made my life so much easier-- and I don’t have to worry about misplacing a USB drive again.

Conclusion

So while there were some things I initially was slow to learn, I feel like I accomplished all of my goals and then some. I am particularly proud of the fact that, with the readings like Kajder article, “Digital Youth,” in the back of my head, I purposely attempted things that weren’t just my goals-- such as going to an intro class on 3-D printers and making something with it, opening a twitter account, and creating a short picture montage video.