Connectivism Video Blog

How connected are you?

I thought I was pretty connected before I watched the video. I have a Facebook account, and a website that displays pictures of my family and life. I also have three email accounts and I text and use the Internet onto my cell phone all the time. I even set up a twitter account and now I have entered the world of blogging. However, I still am only a baby when it comes to being connected. I have so much to learn and it is very hard to learn all of the great things out there when you didn't grow up with the technology like our students we teach. I am very envious of them and how easy it will be for them to stay connected to the world and can envision my students in the future having conversations with other students from around the world, learning from their cultures, and getting the best education they can no matter what their background and where they come from. What a great thing technology has become.

Are you a 21st Century Learner, teacher, or both?

I am definitely a learner and am trying to figure things out everyday to better use technology in my everyday life and my teaching life. However, I still don't think I am a 21st Century teacher. I am in the beginning stages of being a teacher but I myself, still need to learn more skills to better teach my students to become a 21st Century learner. I also need to better use my student's knowledge of technology to help all of us to become 21st Century learners.

What role do you play in supporting the 21st Century Student?

My role in supporting the 21st Century student is to first learn all I can about all the technology students will be using and also use it in my daily and teaching life so I am better prepared to teach and support my students in their learning. Once I am fluent with technology skills, my role in the classroom becomes a facilitator to my students, to help them learn and use technology

to gain the knowledge and education they need to become 21st Century learners and citizens.

Technology Integrated Lesson

Since getting my SMART board last year and the projector, it has opened up my class to a whole new world of technology. I feel I am only scratching the surface on integrating technology in my classroom. It is very hard for me to pinpoint the best lesson I have done when I used technology because I use technology throughout my whole day. What I mostly use technology for is to make my lesson more hands-on and visual for my students. For Social Studies, Reading, and Math, I pull in websites for students to explore right on the SMART board and they can get more information on a topic. Websites are a great way also to clarify any confusion that students have on the topic. However, sometimes navigating websites and finding things are hard to do and many times I haven't found the right information I want to show my students. So to modify and change the use of websites for next time, I would make sure I bookmark the actual page I want students to look at and link it in with my SMART lessons. I also use Discovery Education video streaming in all of my subjects. This is a great way to integrate technology in the classroom because it gives the students another perspective and is a great visual for those students who are visual learners. My students get really engaged in the video clips because they are so used to watching movies, tv, etc. I need to remember to put the videos into the Smart player so it can become interactive. I often forget to do it and run out of time and need to use the player more consistently. I also use the SMART board and the internet to teach vocabulary words. It is so easy to go on the internet or the SMART board and find a picture of the word you want the students to learn about. Some ways that I am planning to use more technology in my classroom this year is to use the Senteo response systems. I think that will take student participation in my class to a whole new level and they will be very engaged in their learning because to them it will feel like they are playing a video game, which so many love doing. Also, I would like to learn more about Podcasting and creating a classroom website. I think it would be very beneficial for my students and parents to be able to find information about my class on a classroom website.

Best Smart Board lesson- March 2nd

My best smart board lesson I did this year was a whole Unit that I did in Social Studies. We were studying Native American and Ancient American cultures. I had created smart board pages for each lesson of the unit. There were 5 lessons in all. I incorporated multimedia in my lesson by using the note creater and also I used the multiple choice question maker to help review the concepts that we had talked about the day before. I also brought in a lot of websites from the internet and linked them to my Smart board lesson. It was very easy for me to click on the link and show my students the websites. Also, I picture captured a ton of pictures from the internet so it was helpful for my students to get a picture of the Social Studies concepts that we were talking about in class. Lastly, I also attached United Streaming videos to my Smart Board lesson and they were very easy to access when I needed to show them. It took a lot of time to put the lesson together but when I was done it was really fun to teach with and my students enjoyed it because it involved multiple senses.