Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Aside from my full time job as a technology integration coach I adjunct at two local universities.  My courses all involve technology integration in the classroom.  Sometimes the audience is undergraduate pre-service teachers and other times it's established teachers in graduate programs.  During these classes the students work on creating a professional online presence- a digital portfolio. The undergraduates go with the flow- they are students that aren't too far removed from being high school students so they are used to directives.  The graduate students, however sometimes put up a fight.  "Why would I create a portfolio if I'm not looking for a job?" is asked.  This post is my answer. What is a Digital Portfolio? A digital portfolio is a  living document that changes as you progress throughout your career. Portfolios are collections of artifacts and reflect your accomplishments, skills, experiences, reflections and growth as an educator. It d...

Have you thought about tweeting with your students but didn't know how to get started?  The end of the school year is a great time to pilot something new!  Below are 5 tips that the fabulous teachers at Coonley Elementary ( @CoonleyES ) have implemented (along with a bonus tip!). Start on Paper The first week of school I begin with a Twitter Prompt-a-Day to get the school community  excited for the upcoming year. While my goal is to someday see all of our teachers with a Twitter account we aren't quite there yet.  Photos by  @CoonleyLibrary  Not wanting to leave anyone out, I ask the teachers to tweet on paper and then I tweet it from the school account.  Additionally, you can have students create "tweets" via sentence strips to practice offline.  Have little learners?  How about creating a graphic organizer that only has 140 boxes (this is the character limit on Twitter) for students to practice tweets on (and sneak in a bit of s...

Recently a 5th grade teacher came to see me about a research project.  As we talked through the details we had a discussion about evaluating websites.  As a result of this conversation I created a presentation for her students on evaluating websites. Here is the presentation along with some additional resources. Learn More Dig Deeper (older students) http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html Great Infographic http://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/evaluating-web-resources/ Seven Steps to Website Evaluation https://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/step-a-seven-steps-to-website-evaluation-for-students-promoting-digital-citizens/ Question Media Wiki https://questionit.wikispaces.com Poster http://www.radcab.com Great 1 page examples from Easybib http://media.easybib.com/ebook/mla_websiteeval.pdf https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iX_FWlyuIIQxDmueswljWjCxz94R1B4-gdr8klf312A/edit#slide=id.p20 (same ex...

As an instructional technology coach and adjunct professor the amount of information I cover is extensive.  Teachers expect that a coach will have a wide range of knowledge, skills and pedagogy in order to help build capacity and provide the best recommendations for student learning. As a teacher I am always learning from my PLN and my colleagues, building my knowledge base and improving my craft.  This post is dedicated to the ways I am learning right now, at this point in time.  I plan to cross post this information on my About.me page as well as my digital portfolio .  As educators it is increasingly important that we expand our own knowledge and model this learning for our students.  Cross posting this information on a page that I know others will see will help to keep me accountable and current in my journey. Can you imagine if all teachers posted how they were currently learning?  Our students would not only see we don't stop the journey when we l...

When you think of a computer scientist what image comes to mind? Do you picture someone super smart? A bit geeky?  Male or female? Happy or serious? See what our Kindergarten through fifth graders thought! Adjectives Describing Computer Scientists by Students in Grades 2-5 Little Learners Move the Flurb Course 1 Activity In December after Hour of Code Coonley coding classes began.  As participants in CPS' CS4All pilot program I co-teach code.org's curriculum to our K-5 students (grades 6-8 are incorporated into existing science and math classes).  There are two courses for beginners; course 1 for Kindergarten & 1st grade students and course 2 for students in grades 2-5.  Both courses begin with "unplugged" activities (offline). Course 1 for our little learners began with some basic directional activities where students cut and pasted cardinal directions to "Move the Flurb" to a piece of fruit.  Since our little learners had already...