PLN Reflection

http://jenn6462.edu.glogster.com/pln/

Before this class, I really didn't know what a PLN was, or how much I needed one to be a more successful teacher.  We try to share with our colleagues as much as possible, but often that's just not enough.  Everyone has families, commitments, their own crazy schedule, etc.  It's hard to find that vital time to share resources and ideas.  With an online PLN we can have that support and collaboration that we need, at any time that is convenient for us.  We can use resources like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Blogger and more to keep in touch, share lesson plans, resources, apps, and so much more.  I feel like I have learned more about enhancing my teaching since I have established my PLN.  I have always been obsessed with Pinterest, so I have to say my new favorite tool is Twitter.  Of course I could not use it to its full potential without Hootsuite to organize my posts.  I look forward to continuing to use the valuable tools that we have learned about.  

Twitter Chats

I participated in 2 Twitter Chats today.  I had some difficulty finding one at first, and I also struggled with not letting life get in the way of participating in the chats.  I can't imagine participating in one without a tool like Hootsuite or one of the other apps.  

The first chat I participated in was #Web20tools.  When I logged in to participate there was no moderator, and the only participants were from our class.  So, we did what all teachers do, and we improvised.  We had our own discussion about what Web 2.0 tools we like and use often in our classrooms.  I am so thankful that this was my first experience with Twitter chats because it moved at much slower pace.  However, I did find myself struggling to keep up with who was talking about what.

The second chat I participated in was super overwhelming because there was such a large number of participants.  Even though I am not a 1:1 teacher, I hope to be in the near future so I joined in for the #1to1techat.  Through most of the chat I found that I struggled to keep up.  If I stopped to post, I got farther and farther behind on what was going on.  At one point I have to give up and skip a whole chunk of posts.  However, while it was hard to keep up, that meant that there were so many more people sharing ideas.  I am looking forward to going back tonight and re-reading what I missed.  

Overall I enjoyed this experience.  It is a great way to expand your PLN, and chat in real time with others who share a common interest.  I found 5-10 new people that I am very excited to start following every day.  

METC

I am so thankful to have had to opportunity to attend the METC conference on Tuesday.  It was really inspiring to be around so many people who are already doing such great things in their classrooms and are willing to share their ideas.  The presenters were so knowledgable and gave a lot of opportunities for others to share their ideas and experiences.

I attended 4 sessions (one was a two hour session).  The first session I attended was Exploring the Wide World of Web 2.0 with Julie Tonsing-Meyer from McKendree University.  She shared with us tools like Poll anywhere, Glogster, Voki, Class Dojo, Screencast o Matic, and Remind 101.  Through the MET program I feel like we have already learned about most of these tools, but it was nice to have a quick refresher on them.  I am going to look into using Remind 101.  I have tried in the past to get my parents to sign up for Twitter with little success.  This would give me another way to send them reminders (without giving out my phone number!).  

The second session I attended/facilitated was 10 apps, 4 students, 1 teacher with Beth Phillips and her students at Francis Howell.  In this presentation most of the apps that were suggested were better suited for secondary education but I was able to think of a few ways to use them in my elementary classroom. The one I am the most excited about is Explain Everything.  We use Making Meaning as our core Com Arts curriculum.  Unfortunately if the students are absent, they may miss out on hearing a part of a story.  With Explain Everything you can upload a story, document, or presentation and record your voice with it.  I would love to be able to record our Making Meaning stories for our lower readers to use during intervention times.  Some of the other apps the students suggested were Evernote, My Homework, Notability, Task, Flashcard +, Pic Stitch, Voice Thread, and Sound Cloud.

The third session I facilitated/attended was Reading, Responding, and Researching using tablets with the Reluctant Reader with Julie Otey, Melissa Biehl, and Tom Swoboda.  In this session they explained how them implemented the use of Nook Tablets in a second grade classroom to increase student engagement, motivation, and vocabulary.  Legitimately it makes a ton of sense using a program like Nook and eReaders.  I have found that my students are not honest with themselves about what words they do not know when they are reading.  With Nook the students can highlight a word and look up its meaning or search it to get an image.  While I think that it would take a lot of training and trust with the students I think they would really benefit from using eReaders like this.  Julie also explained to us how she uses Edmodo with her students every day to do a stop and jot.  She showed us many features that I didn't realize you could use in Edmodo.  I am going to set up my class as soon as I finish with this blog post so that we can start using it tomorrow!

The final session I attended was Develop Meaningful iPad Creation-Based Experiences for Students with Jennifer Panganiban and Chrissie Edwards from the Decatur School District.  These were probably two of the most passionate women that I saw all day.  They were so excited about what they do, and full of good ideas it was amazing!  I finally know what the SAMR model is and that we need to moving towards the M and R in this model.  We want to be redefining what we are doing in our classrooms, not just using technology as a babysitting tool.  The most important thing they shared with us was that when working with technology you need to use backwards design.  Decide on what it is the students need to learn and then decide on which tool would best be used.  Don't go to your technology facilitator and say I want to use______ (whatever app) and hope for the best.  Some of the great Apps they shared with us included Popplet (like inspiration), Educreations, Splice, Skitch, and Poll Anywhere.  

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to attend and be a part of this incredible day.  I have already told our technology facilitator that I want to go back next year!!!

Personal Learning Networks and Social Networking

I "grew up" as part of the Facebook generation.  I remember when it first started, and was limited to college students ONLY and it took time to even add all of the colleges across the country.  We used Facebook as a way to connect with long lost friends, and keep in touch with new ones.  That being said, you would think that I would have more experience with social networking.  As we work through the MET program I am discovering that there is so much more to social networking than I ever imagined.  When I started as a first year teacher I relied on the veteran teachers for resources and ideas. As time went on, I discovered that there were educators all over the country who wanted to share their ideas and collaborate with other teachers.  So often I have an idea in mind that I want to do or make for my students that I have never done before.  Now thanks to all of the personal learning networks out there, I have learned not to re-create the wheel and go searching online before I set out to create on my own.

One of my all time favorite components to my PLN is Pinterest.  One day I was on Pinterest looking for some new ideas to use with the Daily 5 in my classroom.  It was still a new resource we were using at our school and I needed some help and ideas.  I did a quick search on Pinterest and found all of these great ideas that people had posted on their blogs.  Those blogs linked me to other blogs that had great ideas.  Before long I had 15 blogs on google that I followed with Google Reader.  I checked it anxiously each day with excitement for what these master teachers were sharing with us (yes, I know I'm a little bit of a nerd).  If anyone needs some great elementary blogs to follow let me know!

I decided to try out edWeb this week.  I was pleasantly surprised at how user friendly it is.  Once you answer a few questions you are logged in and ready to go.  With a  quick search I found groups that were of interest to me.  The two I have become a member of for now are, iPads in the Classroom and Tech Tools for the Classroom.  I am always looking for new apps and programs to try out.  I like that each group is a little different.  The tech tools group contains more webinars you can join whereas the iPad group has blogs, discussion boards, and resources.  No matter what you are interested in, there was something for everyone!

The Networked Classroom

I would love to have a fully networked classroom.  In order to be competitive in the world our students need to be able to use technology.  If we start at a young age, our students will stay current on the newest technology and will be able to compete in a tough job market.  I feel like my school is making great strides towards us having networked classrooms but we still have a long way to go.  I think that one of the biggest advantages of having a networked classroom is the accessibility.  We would be able to connect to other students in our building, district, state, and all over the world.  Alternatively, our parents would have more access to what is going on in our room.  Which also brings me to a disadvantage.  Our school has  a HUGE variety of families from all socio-economic backgrounds.  Unfortunately more than 40% of our students are on free and reduced lunch.  We have a lot of families who don't even have an internet connection.  We would be limited as to what could be done outside of school.

I like to think that I am in the process of transitioning to a networked classroom.  This is my first year as an eMINTS for all classroom.  As the year has progressed, I am trying to take projects that we do every year and think about how I could incorporate more technology into them.  We are so fortunate to have an amazing technology facilitator in our building who can help me take my crazy ideas, and make them interactive and appropriate for my kids.  I hope one day that my classroom will be like those mentioned in the our book.

Networked classrooms are a fantastic way to meet the diverse needs of our learners.  We can use technology to modify assignments for students with special needs.  We can also use it to challenge our gifted students. 

Twitter

Please post about your first reflections of learning about and using Twitter.

@JWintergalen

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was pretty excited to start learning about Twitter to establish my PLN.  After this week, I am still excited, but also a little overwhelmed.  The link to Twitter4Teachers was a huge help in getting things up and running.  I have tried to search for teachers on Twitter before and not been very successful.  This made it so easy to find people with similar interests.  I'm not going to lie, I had to go to the Twitter for Dummies page (http://www.blogtips.org/twitter-for-dummies-part-4-the-geeky-art-to-nerdy-tweets/) to get help with the #'s and @'s.  It was a great site for explaining the basics.    I am amazed at all of the resources that people posted.  I almost felt like Twitter was reading my mind.  Once Tweets started showing up for people I follow, I was thinking, "Perfect!  I was just looking for this!"  

I signed up for HootSuite to help me manage my Twitter account.  I can tell that I am going to need to spend some more time with this site.  I don't entirely get the point of it.  The only feature that I can see that I immediately like is that it organizes the Tweets that I mark as my favorite.  

Does anyone use Twitter with elementary students or have a suggestions on how to use it with them?

Blog Entry 1

For your blog post this week, I want you to reflect on the reading from the Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2 in the Personal Learning Network book.

The Introduction and Chapter 1 focus on how technology's role in education is constantly changing and what we can do to keep up with it.  I have been in the educational field for less than 10 years but in that short time I have seen tremendous changes.  Richardson and Mancabelli summed it up best when they said, "At this moment, the average educator between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five was born into a world with no world wide web, no cell phones, no smartphones and few (if any) portable personal computers.  As recently as 2000, most schools were still places where the term technology meant the glow of the overhead projector or the teacher's desktop computer…"  When I started teaching I had an overhead projector and 2 classroom computers.  When I created documents for my students or parents, I thought I was pretty cool when I added a picture border to my document. Now, I find myself in a room with a SMARTboard, 6 laptops, a teacher laptop, and a document camera, with access to much much more.  I feel like I got my teaching degree at a crucial time when all of these changes were getting ready to happen, so we really weren't prepared for them while in college.  

I found myself thinking today about reform vs. transformation and realize that much of what we are still doing is reform.  We are trying to figure out how to make the technology fit into what we have always done.  Taking baby steps towards transformation.  In working with one of our 5th grade teachers who is in a full eMINTS classroom (in 3rd grade we are eMINTS for all), I have seen the great things they are doing to get the students to show their knowledge with the use of technology.  I would love to take some of these things head on, but as our book pointed out, there isn't always quality PD offered on these topics at our schools.  Too much of the talk now is the switch to Common Core and new MAP testing.  Sadly technology has taken a back seat to these topics.  

I'm a little ashamed to admit it but my favorite part of Chapter 2 was explaining how to use Twitter as part of a PLN.  I get using it for communication, and keeping in touch, but people kept talking about collaborating with it, and using it for PD and I just didn't understand how you can do that in 140 characters or less.  I do have a twitter account but mostly follow pop culture and news sources and use it when I am bored.  I am excited to now start to start building a professional community within this resource.