Personal Learning Reflection in CEP 810

I must admit at the beginning of this course, I did not integrate a lot of technology into my teaching. I did regularly use a smart board and integrate text, images, and video into my teaching, but that was it. When creating lessons, adding technology was not one of the first things on my mind. If it could fit in great, but if not, I did not go out of my way to incorporate it.  However, now my vision has changed. Through this course, I have learned about many technology tools, how to use them, and how to incorporate them into student learning and promoting 21^st century learning. Towards the end of this school year, I was trying to incorporate technology and promote digital learning if everything I did with my students.

It is important for educators to promote 21^st century learning. Our students already used e-mail, Facebook, cell phone, and iPods in their daily lives to communicate and share information. Why are we as teachers not tapping into their digital skills in the classroom and utilizing their skills and talents with these technology tools to help promote better learning?  This course has helped me to reflect on my own teaching strategies and the tools that I use in my classroom. I have learned so much that I can take back with me as I plan for the future.

The whole world is using the Internet as a tool for things such as communication, information sharing, collaboration, and the like. It is important to teach students how to properly use the tools available to them and to introduce them to the tools that are out there to promote success as they try to achieve their personal best in the classroom.

Throughout this course, I feel that all of the portfolio assignments and participation assignments have given me ideas of how good teaching can occur with technology. I have had the opportunity to learn first hand many of the tools out there. It will take time to learn all the in’s and out’s to each tool and to see how they work with a group of students. I now have the start to a magnificent digital toolbox that I can use for the years to come.

Based on my personal growth plan that I wrote at the beginning of this course, I have grown in many ways. First and foremost, I have looked a technology in a different light and have made it a bigger priority in my teaching to help promote better learning and promote 21^st century learners.  I have learned to create a blog and use it as a tool for communication and information sharing. I have yet to learn the way to create a website, but hope to do so in future courses. I have gathered and used many tools to help promote communication, which is one of my goals as a French teacher. I have successfully learned how to use Skype and VoiceThread, which will be useful to me for years to come. In any case, the tools that I have learned to use will help me integrate new tools for students and hit a variety of learning styles as I present new information to my students.

In the end, I have increased my skills of using technology, added tools to my repertoire for teaching, and through all of this my students will have a well-rounded experience in the classroom where they learn the material and can apply what they know to the world around them.

As for the future, I hoped to continually add to my technology toolbox, integrate technology into my teaching, and promote the use of technology not only to enhance what is going on in the classroom, but to take our future students into our digital world in the 21st century.

Personal Technology Plan

Personal Technology Plan on Prezi

Learning Styles

My Learning Style Quiz Results
Quiz can be found at http://www.edutopia.org/mi-quiz

Reflecting on my results, it seems that my two highest areas are Visual-Spatial and Interpersonal. This is a pretty accurate representation of how I feel that I learn best. Throughout school, I have also been a hands on learner, needed to see something and experience it to learn best. I tend to be able to manipulate and visualize things in my head or see a picture of the final outcome. I also tend to thrive on social interaction, which I think is one of the reasons that teaching is a great fit for me. Being able to interact with students and staff, present information that I am passionate about, and share my opinions is something that I truly enjoy and look forward to everyday. A close third in my results was logical-mathematical. While math is not one of my strong suits, the sciences are. It is interesting to see that many of the learning style results are fairly close with one another, which in my mind means that it is important to incorporate all types of learning in the classroom because each learning style has their own benefits and may allow educators to present the information in the best way.

In looking back at my educational past, it seems that the naturalistic and interpersonal learning styles where the ones that were the least effective for me. Despite the results of this quiz, I am not one with nature and do not care about the organization or classification of plants or animals (even though I am a Biology teacher, those are some topics that I have little interest with). As far as interpersonal learning, I am not one to like working alone or in a quiet environment. I tend to like many things going on at once, noise in the background, and multi-tasking. 

As an educator, I feel that it is important that we reach out to all of our students and all of their learning styles. While it is difficult to incorporate every learning style into every lesson, it is important that our lessons are not presented in the same way everyday. By incorporating lessons or activities that hit each different learning style, we are able to present and work with information or course content in a way so that every student is able to learn and retain information in a way that suits them best. It is also important to incorporate all learning styles so that all students have opportunities to work at their personal best. If we only focused on one or two learning styles in every lesson, many students would be left in the dark and would not have the opportunity to do their personal best. 

Creative Commons

Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Louvre"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoetnet/4851100053/in/photostream/lightbox/
by: zoetnet

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Focus"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoetnet/4851102357/in/photostream/lightbox/
by: zoetnet

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "P1040866"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoetnet/4851719100/in/photostream/lightbox/
by: zoetnet

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

In the foreign language classroom, images play a pivotal role in learning vocabulary and giving students insight into the language, culture, history, art, food, etc. Using creative commons give teachers and students the opportunities to use images properly giving the creators credit. The images I have included above, could be used to take students on a virtual field trip to the Louvre, one of the world's best art museums. It gives students the opportunity to experience the museum and its art. This virtual field trip can lead to many different lesson ideas, such as a culture/art introduction, discussing an individual piece of artwork in the target language, re-creating artwork in class, among many other ideas. This is not something that has to be limited to a museum, but it could give teachers the opportunity to take students on a tour through the city, look at famous monuments, experience the target culture within the classroom. This is beneficial especially when school districts have had to limit field trips and study abroad trips due to budgets. Even if schools were supporting field trips or study abroad trips, not every student can afford to travel. This is a great way for all students to experience a world outside of their own.


Here is a link to my Flickr Page. Please enjoy the photos posted there. You will find many with Creative Commons Licensing and some with All Rights Reserved. 

                 

                                              

  

PC Maintenance & Security

As I worked through the PC Maintenance and Security Lab tutorials, I was surprised at how much of the information that I was already familiar with. Scrolling through and watching several videos, I found three that I have not heard of or ones that I wanted to know why we should do a certain task.

The first video tutorial that I watched was about clearing an internet browsing history. It was something that I have heard about, but never really carried out. I can see the importance of clearing the browsing history as a way to protect private information and protect privacy. It is a very easy task that I can share with others so privacy can be assured, especially on computers that are accessible to many users or the general public. I found it funny that in the tutorial the presenter mentioned that sometimes a computer in a household that is somewhat private generally does not have a cleared history and that if you find a cleared history and you have kids, that this might be a sign that they were up to something that maybe the should not have been up to.

The second video tutorial that I watched was about backing up files. I have heard of others backing up files or backing up their system, but it is not something that I have ever done in my life. After watching the tutorial, I see how it can be a benefit to back up your files in case something happens to your computer. Many people never anticipate something happening to their computer or files, they say "it won't happen to me". Backing up your files and your system helps the user have a way to recover their files or restore their computer in the off chance something bad happens to it. In the long run it is a way to save time, energy, and prevent a stressful situation.

The third video tutorial that I watched was about defragmenting the various drives on your computer. I found that it is a way to keep things in check to keep your hard drive functioning at it's best, at the same time preventing unneeded wear and tear. I have defragmented my computer in the past, maybe once a year. In the tutorial I learned that it is best to do every month to keep things working smoothly.

While many of these tutorials covered information that I was already familiar with, I was able to take away some new information to share with others.

RSS Page Reflection

As a newbie to RSS feeds and using the RSS reader I am slowly but surely learning the ropes to using these programs to keep up to date on news and current events taking place through the feeds that I am watching.  Based on the feeds that I am following, I need to visit and peruse the various postings on a daily basis to prevent them from building up. I missed a couple days over one weekend and one French news site that I am following had over 1000 new posts. It only makes sense that a news site would continuously be adding new news to keep people up to date. Other sites that I am following, such as the Michigan Department of Education and NPR’s Education site have updates that come at a much slower pace, so if you miss checking your feeds for a day or two, you do not get too far behind on keeping current with what is going on. There were even some feeds that I am following such as MSU EduTech Newsletter and Weblogg-ed site that have had no updates since I have added them to my reader page. Based on what I have experienced so far, it brings all my news and updates to one easy place so I do not have to navigate through a bunch of websites. It also allows me to quickly access any information quickly by scrolling through my list.

With all the information being shared through my different feeds I have experienced many things. I have learned about new technologies available to teachers or new upcoming things that teachers will be able to utilize in the classroom as ways of integrating technology. Following the Michigan Department of Education’s website, I have been able to keep up on some major events related to teaching professionals as education in Michigan is undergoing some change at this point in time. One of the French blogs that I am following is a place to share tips and resources for those traveling to Paris or for just news about Paris happenings. It has been a great resources for little culture tips to share with my students along with some funny stories about various faux pas that have happened to people. As I add new feeds to my page and keep up with my current feeds, I find that I am able to stay current with new technology, new thoughts in education, and keep up to date with various topics in the francophone world which will help keep me in the now with my colleagues, students, friends, and family.

I think it is important that students keep up to date with the new technology available to them. I was surprised the other day when I introduced Prezi to my students for a project that we are working on and how many of them had trouble navigating the sign up page, starting a presentation, and actually completing the task at hand with this very user friendly presentation software. In my opinion many students are lagging in the new technologies available to them, so it is important for any teacher to introduce new tools for students to help keep in touch with our ever so growing technology based future. In my classroom, I think introducing students to RSS feeds and RSS reader programs would be a way to open up our world to the francophone world around us. Students could be asked to follow specific sites that cater to things such as French art, history, culture, politics, news, food, etc. They could have a weekly assignment possibly where they would report or share some interesting news related to a topic. This would be a way to keep current with the culture and community we are studying. It would also allow us to form connections with the francophone world. In some instances, students would be able to compare things here in America with things that are happening halfway across the world. This could open the door for students to add additional feeds to their page either for my specific class or for their other interests. 

Below is the information from my previous RSS Lab Post.

This is an updated screenshot of my RSS Page.

This is a screen shot of one of the blogs I added to my RSS page. It provides unique insights into different things related to Paris. I left a comment regarding some interesting tips for people traveling to or learning about Paris. It is also something that I can share with my students.

Getting Things Done

After reading about the Getting Things Done process, I looked back at the ways that I have kept myself organized in the past. I am generally a very organized person and pay close attention to deadlines or due dates. However, I may not be organized in the stereotypical way with everything in its place. I like to think of my way of getting things done in the past as organized chaos. In the past and still to this day I frequently use my monthly agenda for important dates, meetings, and deadlines. As for day-to-day or weekly tasks, I frequently use lists or the forever trusted post it note. Post it notes seem to be one of my life lines with notes and mini agendas that give me daily goals, weekly goals, or possibly a note of something coming up in the near future. After reflecting upon my ways of organization and reading about the Getting Things Done process, I tried it out.

To organize my process, I choose to use paper and pencil. At this point in time, it seemed to be the fastest way for me to get everything out in the open and to be able to edit it with ease. While I am an owner of a Blackberry smart phone, I have not used it for many of the features is possesses. I would like to rely on it to help keep me organized, but due to the cell phone policy at our school, it is not something that I can use during the school day in front of students, as students are not allowed to have them out during the day. When cell phones are used and learning and organizational tools in the classroom (Which will hopefully happen soon), I think I will utilize my phone more as an organizational tool for myself.

Going through the process for the first time was a bit tedious for me. I understand that once it becomes more familiar and second nature, the process will tend to streamline and speed up.  The collect step was fairly easy. I was able to create quite a comprehensive list of tasks to complete ranging from short-term tasks to long-term tasks and to focus on deadlines of certain tasks. For the process step, I felt that going through the 5 steps was too much to think about or ask for each step.  The organize step allowed me to prioritize and organize the tasks in an easy manner to keep me on task, meet deadlines, and complete the tasks in an easy manner. I agree the review step holds the whole process together, but when looking at your organized list you should constantly be reviewing your process and making changes concurrently. As far as the final doing step, I don’t think it was necessary to ask all the questions associated with this step. Once you have your list, get to it. There are some times where it doesn’t matter what you can do, the time you have, or the energy you have. These are the times that you just have to get the task done regardless of the fact that it may be something you want or do not want to do at that moment.

I think there are components of this process that I can apply to my everyday life that can help me stay on top of my organization skills. I think the organization step will benefit me the most by helping me prioritize what needs to be done and to do so in a timely fashion.

Other than taking some of the parts and applying it to my already organized chaos of planner and post it notes, I do not think I will continue the entire process in my quest to get things done. In the time that it takes to go through the steps and ask the questions, I could have already completed some of the simple tasks on my list versus sitting down and going through a process that seems somewhat tedious and unneeded at this point in my life.  I do think that when I transition to using my smart phone as an organizational tool, I will be able to keep myself organized quicker by using software available to me and keep the tasks organized as they arise from the moment I enter them into my phone or software program. Until that time, even though it may seem to be a bit old school, I am going to stick with my tried and true post it note system and my monthly agenda.