Thing 12: Final Reflections & What's Next

I enjoyed this workshop more than most workshops that I have participated in.  I really liked the format with many choices so we could all personalized the workshop to what will help each of us the most.  I enjoy completing things online and therefore that was not a problem.  My biggest challenge was my own personal time management, hence the reason that I'm finishing on the last day but I am finishing.

I always felt that I was comfortable with technology and not afraid to dive in and learn new things about technology.  This workshop taught me that I'm a little more timid about trying new things than I originally thought, but it pushed me to try anyways.  As educators, we push our students to try new things and that is what this did for me.  I now know how to blog and have a twitter account for professional purposes.  I found that I liked Buncee for slideshows but I'm not sure how much I will use it in the future because you have to pay for it for classrooms.  I will continue to look for new online programs though to introduce to the students so that they see there is a wide variety of available on the internet, they just need to explore.  I also look forward to exploring the newer technology that is trending right now and I think that my new Twitter account will help me to keep up with the continuous changes and developments.

I hope that this is offered to me again because I would love the opportunity to learn about more of the topics and practice my personal time management skills.  I would encourage a few of my co-workers to also try this professional development program.  

Thing 15: Emerging Tech & Scanning the Horizon

As I was reading through the articles for this thing, I found myself more and more curious about what the authors of the articles predicted for technology trends in education.  I also found myself becoming more excited about the opportunities we would have available for our students.  Not only am I our school's librarian but I also teach technology and computer skills, that is why I choose this thing to learn more about.

I have the interesting task of helping our students to learn and respect the new technology while also teaching them the traditional basics like keyboarding, word processing, power point slide shows, etc.  I feel that they still need these basic skills for background knowledge in order to understand the newer technology and how to adapt to it and how to use it.

One trend that was often talked about and that I have seen some of is virtual reality.  I can see using virtual reality with my students, especially virtual reality field trips due to the fact that we live in a rural area and not all of our students are fortunate enough to be able to visit a large city or even a big museum.  Children who have never had the opportunity to travel beyond our small town have a difficult time understanding the difference between rural and urban.  A virtual reality field trip around a large city, like New York City would truly help them to see and experience the differences in ways that pictures can't quite do so.  I look forward to exploring sites and ways to use virtual reality in my classroom and helping my colleagues to do the same.  I don't see us using virtual reality devices, like Google Cardboard at this time though because all elementary students don't have access to smart phones.  Virtual reality on our smartboards will definitely be a turn in the right direction. 

My biggest obstacle is some of my veteran teachers who don't understand or are nervous of all these technology trends.  They refuse to admit that educational practices are not going to return to the way they were but are progressively becoming more dependent on the internet and other technology.  For example, it is no longer about researching using actual encyclopedia books but about sifting through the many online sources of information to discover which ones are from trustworthy sources and which are from fake sources.  

Technology trends is making it necessary for teachers to get students to think for themselves at a young age and discover how a new site or program works without being taught step by step.  Their sense of accomplishment when they figure it out and can they explain it to a fellow student, or better yet - their teacher, how to use the site or program is ultimately priceless.  Students will remember always these accomplishments.  Technology trends are also going to require that we teach students about digital citizenship and social media.  We want our kids to grow to become responsible users of the internet and all that it entails, while protecting themselves and those that they love.  This will help to promote a healthier school and community environment.

I love how technology is developing and how it can positively change education.  Let's see where we will go next and how our current students will change the world in the future.  After all, we are educating our future leaders and innovators.   

Thing 3: Twitter & Other Online Communities

This was an interesting one for me.  Although I love technology and use social media, I never considered using twitter.  I know a lot of people who do, but the idea of another social media site to keep up with kind of scared me to be completely honest.  That is why I choose this thing.  I believe that sometimes we need to admit our fears, and weaknesses, and face them head on.  Isn't this what we sometimes ask of our students.  We don't let them say I don't know how to do that and it scares me to learn, we encourage them to try and help them along the way as needed.   Therefore, that is exactly what I did, I jumped in with both feet and created a twitter account and if I get lost or confused along the way, I will rest assured that my friends, and children, will guide me.  So you can follow me on twitter, if you want, @TA_OKeefe.

I plan on using my new twitter account at this time to follow and read other post about education, technology and science.  I will probably venture out as I become more comfortable.  I was surprised that within minutes of creating my twitter account that my brother started following me, I didn't even tell him that I was thinking a creating a twitter account.  As I was reading through various post and articles that were linked to the post, an idea kept resonating with me.  As teachers today, we need to teach our students how to adapt and change to keep up with technology more than how to use a certain program or website.  We need to empower the students to be able to figure out how to find and use different web tools in a safe and appropriate way, without us telling them how each and every function of that particular tool works.  If we can achieve this, our students may begin even teaching us new things.

Although, I still feel twitter is a bit overwhelming at this time, I'm glad that I joined and look forward to reading and learning new and exciting things from others.  Maybe soon, I'll feel comfortable enough to tweet.

Thing 5: Presentation Tools

I am always looking for new and exciting ways to teach the students how to present information to their teachers and classmates, so that is why I decided to explore this thing.  I explored many of the different tools mentioned like canva.com, glogster, bunkr, prezi, and buncee.  Due to the fact that I work with elementary students, I liked Buncee the best.  I signed up for a free educational buncee account and was able to try a trial of buncee for classrooms with student accounts.  I worked with our music teacher who was creating a project for 5th grade about composers and we gave the students the option of using Buncee to complete their project.  Below is a link to my assignment Buncee.


https://www.edu.buncee.com/buncee/v2/876245/?share_key=1217e885dcc911e6b27800185179db73

I taught the 5th and 6th grade classes how to use Buncee and let them each create one on their own. Some of the 5th graders did then choose to use it for their music project, one even choose to go home and create her own Buncee account and show her family.  The student feedback I received was awesome, they loved the options that this provided.  Since this initial lesson, we (the students and I) have gone on the produce additional Buncees.  Our school is preparing for our annual Catholic School's Week celebration and the students created a Buncee to invite the community to our Catholic School's Week Opening Mass or Spaghetti dinner or they created a Buncee about why they love our school.  I hope to continue to use Buncee to be able to create digital posters in the future and share these among our school community.  If you have not tried Buncee I encourage you to give it a try.  This site is extremely user friendly for us and the young students we work with.

Thing 1: Blogging

     My name is Terri and this is my first time blogging.  I feel very uncertain about all of this but hope to become more comfortable as I work through my Cool Tools for School online PD.  I'm a teacher/libraian at Trinity Catholic School in upstate NY.  I have a wonderful husband of 16 years and 2 beautiful teenagers that keep me very busy when not at school.
     I am hoping that this course gives me many tools to enhance my students learning and love of learning.  I feel that it is important to connect with each child that passes through my door on an individual basis.  In order for me to do that, I need to stay up to date on new technology and ways of reaching even our most challenging students.  I feel that this course will help me accomplish this.
     I have learned through this first lesson that I'm more apprehensive about blogging than I expected to be.  I thought that it would be easy to set up and use a blog and I'm sure I will get there but I'm not there yet.  I can see the value in teaching students to blog but don't know if I will use it with my students at this time.  I need to become much more comfortable with all of this first.  So, let the learning continue...