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)

Areas for Improvement (Related to the ISTE Teacher Standards)

1. Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning environment, and assessing their own progress
- I would like to try at least one inquiry project this year where the students are able to research and present some information based on their own interests/curiosities

2.  Collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation
- I am working on building a wikispace to keep students/parents informed on what is going on in the classroom and school (i.e., calendar, field trip notices, links to useful sites, etc.)
- At some point, I am hoping to make it a more interactive tool and have the students use it to work together/present information

Digital Citizenship

In setting up a class to support digital citizenship, what guidelines/expectations would you use?
- to start with, all of the students would need access to the technology, which is hard to come by with one computer lab and one laptop cart for a school of 500+ students
- nevertheless, if accessibility wasn't an issue, then the following guidelines/expectations would be in place: students would be taught how to use technology in an appropriate manner (i.e., if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, it is not okay to post it on the internet), everyone is welcome to comment on each other's work, knowing the difference between contributing vs. criticizing, you can't edit/delete each other's work without the approval of that person, the technology is to be used as outlined by the teacher, all comments/posts are respectful, give parents/students a list of rules and guidelines of how technology is to be used at the beginning of the year (have both parents and students sign so that everyone is on the same page as to what is considered acceptable use), teacher determines at what time technology can be used in class
- if technology is used inappropriately, students will lose the privilege and further consequences will be given by the teacher/administrator

How can I see myself best utilizing an on-line learning network?
- I could see myself referring to an on-line learning network as a way of accessing resources (both print and personal) and staying aware of events/conferences that are of interest to me

Literacies in the Classroom

What literacies do my students need to be successful?
- I believe the idea is that the students need ALL of the literacies/skills to be successful

What do I need to do to support the learning of these literacies?
- provide students with opportunities to play with new programs/activities before having to perform a certain task 
- use technology to simulate an experience, such as a 3D computer model of the respiratory system (beats buying a cow's lung to dissect/analyze with the class)
- although my students want the opportunity to multitask by listening to music via their headphones during class, I'm just not sure how I feel about this...need to know that they are listening and on-task
- continue to assign group work to students that will ensure that everyone in the group is accountable and has a say (distributed cognition)
- teach the skills how to determine what information is accurate/reliable on the internet (look at information/advertisements with a critical eye)
- use technology in a way that allows students to work together and build upon each other's ideas

Presentation of 12 Skills

What did you learn through the process of creating a presentation in this fashion?
- we used Glogster to present on the skill of judgement
- I found it quite frustrating as I had never used Glogster before
- although I am open to trying new programs, I felt restrained by the time limits and the fact that my computer kept freezing
- it probably would have been more helpful to have a video tutorial to follow (tried to find one, but it was too long and difficult to hear with all of the computers in the room playing tutorials) rather than just learning by trial and error
- it is a cool way for students to create a poster without the paper, but I wonder about the time it would take them to learn the program and play with the fonts/graphics (more focused on making it look nice than on the information presented)
- I also found it tough because I want it to look "perfect", and if it doesn't I easily get discouraged (I'm only that way with my work, not the work of my students)
- I feel that I needed more time to learn the program before being asked to make something with it

How would his apply to your personal practice?
- this could be a cool tool to use with those projects/assignments that require students to present something in a poster format

Portfolio Responses

1.  What have you learned over your past 4 semesters?
- critical reflection (how "who I am" affects how I teach - I've always been in tune to who I am but I've never spent time looking at how that translates to the classroom and the experiences I provide for my students)
- summative vs. formative assessment
- backwards design
- inquiry learning
- workshop method of teaching
- ways to build a classroom community
- professional learning communities
- importance of recognizing and valuing student diversity (culturally responsive teaching)\

2.  Which capacities do you feel you still need growth in?
- Strategic Teacher - I feel that this is a capacity that I could always improve in.  This year, I would like to implement a "form" of writer's workshop based on my learnings from last year's field study (need to adapt it to suit both the teacher's and students' need).  I am also working on putting together a wikispace as a tool to inform students/parents about what is going on in the classroom (i.e., field trip notices, handouts, calendar, classroom expectations) and as a forum to interact with the concepts being taught in class.
- teacher leader

3.  What are you still curious about?
- how to use wikispaces as both an informative and interactive tool
- whether we will have any course work/learning around the capacity of teacher leader

Reflections on Guiding Questions

How does technology support learning in your classroom?
- use weekly emails to keep parents updated on what is going on in the school, classroom and upcoming assignments/tests
- send individual emails to the parents of students who have incomplete assignments
- have students use technology for internet research, word processing, etc.

How can you see technology supporting the learning in my classroom?
- I am working on creating a wikispace for my classroom - not sure if it will be just informative but also interactive
- will continue to do weekly emails and individual emails to parents