Using Content from the Internet

What do you believe your responsibility is as a teacher when using content from the web in your class?
- just as I would have the students do when using print sources, they need to give credit to those sources of information they use from the Internet (bibliography)
- explain to them about copyright, plagiarism and how that also applies to the Internet

Access to Technology

As students and parents continue to gain access to technology, how do you feel your role as teacher is changing?  What pieces of your practice do you feel you may need to change/enhance?
- technology allows me to communicate in a way that allows everyone is able to access information quickly and when it's most convenient for them (rather then typing a notice and hoping the parents receive it, or making individual phone calls home)
- in the past, I have sent weekly emails to parents to keep them updated on activities going on around the school and in the classroom...this has worked quite well and I've received lots of positive comments about this...however, not everyone in my class has an email address and sometimes the mailboxes are full or won't accept my messages for some reason
- in order to improve the effectiveness of my communication, I am creating a wikispace to not only keep parents informed on what is going on in the classroom, but also to provide additional resources for parents (i.e, assignment criteria) and students (i.e., links to online math games) 

Field Study Planning

Having started your field study planning, how does this complete your growth incorporating all capacities?

Strategic Teaching

- The creation and use of a wikispace is completely new to me.  I started working on it in July and am still trying to design it in a way that will be most useful to myself and the students/parents in my class.  It will definitely be a “work in progress” as I add more resources and links to it as the year progresses.

Ethical and Caring Professional

- My reason for creating the wikispace is to improve communication between myself, my students and their parents.  Since I know how much parents have appreciated my weekly emails in the past, I’m sure that the addition of another form of technology to keep parents informed will be well received.

Collaborative Colleague

- I have been working together with other teachers in our course (i.e., Robyn) to troubleshoot as we create our own classroom wikispaces.  It has been great to talk with other teachers about their successes and frustrations as they’ve tried to create/implement a variety of programs in their classrooms (i.e., Eric making a Moodle for the class).

Developing Field Study

What questions/wonderings are beginning to develop for your field study?
- earlier this summer I began putting together a class wiki space (which is a work in progress)
- at this point, I have not decided whether there is going to be an interactive component, or if it will just be a location for me to provide information to the students/parents in my class (as was originally intended)
- I will need more time to see sample wikis and how they were used, before I make that decision
- I am thinking of making my field study questions be something along the lines of: Does the use of a wikispace improve the communication between myself and my students/parents?  How does this compare to parents only receiving the weekly emails like last year?  Is the wikispace being utilized as a resource, or are parents only relying on the emails that I send?  Is the work all for nothing?
- with the wikispace, I will provide links for students/parents to access resources to help them in the different subject areas, as well as connections to assignments, field trip notices, calendar, etc.
 - another way to keep parents on top of what is happening in the classroom
- students can never say that they didn't know what was going on

Curriculum Mapping

How does curriculum mapping support/relate to your own practice of unit development?
- this is very similar to how we were taught unit planning in university
- only difference is in organizing planning based on essential/unit questions, rather than basing it solely on the PLOs
- wondering what the process of taking the PLOs and changing them into essential/unit questions will be like (would like to see some examples at the grade 7 level)

Content Area and Educational Technology

What are your interests, dilemmas and questions concerning your content area and educational technology?
- I am just wondering how I can incorporate technology into the teaching of the Science curriculum
- since most of my teaching around Science is a combination of instruction and experiments, I am wondering how I can incorporate technology rather than using it just so I can say that I did

What is my content area?

1. Select a content area
- Science (Grade 7)

2.  Why do you think we teach this content?  What is the value of it for students and in general?
- for students to learn why/how things happen
- create a deeper understanding of the world around us (actions/reactions)

3.  What are the major knowledge outcomes and what are the major processes/skills?
- students learn the scientific process (how to make a hypothesis, conduct an experiment and analyze the results) and are expected to plan and conduct their own experiment
- creates models to explain scientific concepts and hypotheses
- in terms of content, the students are learning about ecosystems (Life Sciences), Chemistry (Physical Sciences) and Earth's Crust (Earth and Space Science)