A look back at the start of my new journey...

Wow- 8 weeks sure can fly by you when you are busy learning so many new 21^st century skills! Looking back to Week 1 of this course, I realize that I have gained many new technological skills, curriculum applications, and much about my own ability to take risks and try something new.  I would say that my greatest success or accomplishment in this class was simply learning to navigate new tools and create a final product with each “gadget”. I never would have imagined myself being able to create a movie or slideshow in Windows Movie Maker- but I completed several and I am so excited about doing more in the future. The biggest challenge I learned to overcome was that sometimes technology requires patience and the time needed to read through the help desk information. I used to become frustrated, scan over the help desk information and then give up and find something new. For this class, I had due dates and requirements that helped me work through the challenges and problem solve to find a solution. More 21^st century learning going on! If I were to choose something that I could have done better, it would be my first digital story. I was so eager to finish it, that I didn’t take the time to fine-tune the little mistakes. For my final project, I learned to do this.  I would say that I improved my skill with risk-taking during this course, as I learned about and explored with many new learning tools. I was not an experienced student with any of the Module project requirements, yet I learned to become familiar and comfortable.  After this course, I plan to continue to improve my 21^st century skill of collaboration. I hope to be able to share my new knowledge and skills with colleagues and students in a way that they too will be able to showcase their 21^st century learning.  This course has changed my teaching in that I have been motivated to do more with my students and set higher expectations for what I can do as a teacher and what my students can do as learners. I have also learned to make more connections with technology and my curriculum when teaching. As for my personal lifelong learning, I have learned that you are never too old to try something new and that often communicating and collaborating with others will only teach you something more and something useful to what you were discussing in the first place.  I have enjoyed this learning journey in Developing 21^st Century Skills and am eager to continue practicing my new talents.

Live and Learn- or in my case, learn and live!

Life’s timing amazes me sometimes. One day I’m browsing the PLS web and thinking about taking this class on learning about 21^st century skills. The next, I’m enrolled and fearful! Digital stories- um, never heard of such a thing. Web 2.0? I’ll google it. Blogs? Nothing I have done before. Rubrics and assessments- finally familiar terms! I’ll take the class and give it a try. Risk-taking. I decided to step outside of my comfort zone and try new things. And I’m so glad I did. Before long, I’m learning about organizational and social change and the impact it can have on education. As I stated before- life’s timing amazes me at times. Just a few weeks back, my superintendent called for a district meeting regarding the difficult times Pennsylvania is facing with education and the state budget. As a result, our district is about to face many drastic changes. We have many positions that have been eliminated, we will be closing a neighborhood school, we will be losing some of our arts and humanities classes and we are looking at a potential pay freeze. We are facing a time in which many people are affected individually, yet we must remain as a team and work in a way that is empathetic and effective to this difficult process. We are still early in the change process. So far, I have found my superintendent to be a learner with each step he takes- and a leader with each action he makes. He has been mindful of his teachers and staff and sincerely compassionate to the resistance we have experienced.  While all of these changes are new for the school district, the families, and the community; I am confident that with our leader’s change process we will still be successful with the new changes our district will encounter.  It has been such a valuable experience for me to learn about these changes as I will now be able to have more awareness and sensitivity to the issue.  I think we should all keep in mind the quote by Adam Urbanski, “If we always do what we’ve always done, we will get what we’ve always got.” We are living in a time in which our world is changing and education is changing. We must keep up!  I’m about to live what I’ve just learned.

Rubric Tuesday

Well, we have a lot to focus on with our final project for class- but one of the most important aspects of the project is a rubric. A rubric for us. A rubric for our students. Some way to note what it is we are exactly "looking" for and how we are going to measure.  I personally, love when an instructor provides a rubric. I'm a visual learner- so this really helps me paint the picture of what it is I'm supposed to be doing. It also helps me check my work to be sure I've included all of the requirements. 

This week I have played around with rubric websites- I checked out rubistar.4teachers.org/ as well as http://www.techtrain.org/teacher_tools.htm and http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/. I found that they are each pretty simple to follow and design. They have pre-made rubrics or step-by-step rubrics that you can create on your own.  I also found that once you have the concept of what to include, creating your own rubric can be pretty fun!

The one thing I would like to be more involved in is using e-Portfolios. I think this is a great way to document student work and growth. It also helps provide information for parents and intervention teachers to see areas of strengths and challenges. 

My undergraduate assessment class was one of my favorites. I remember my professor stressing the importance of "No surprises- no excuses". If we don't surprise our students with material that is unexpected when assessing- our students can not offer excuses for what they are expected to do.  In taking this course and others that focus on 21st century learning, I think performance is very important to consider when we assess. So many of the 21st century skills can be demonstrated through performance and we should be mindful of this as educators. Not all skills and learning need a paper-based test. We should try to incorporate alternative assessments and performance based assessments to give all students a chance to showcase their curricular skills and 21st century abilities. And no matter what assessment method we choose- rubrics are very important in helping students understand the expectations, while also giving the teacher a consistent measure for all students. 

Awaiting What?!

Yesterday was an interesting day in terms of my connection with 21st Century learning!  At our faculty meeting, our BLT (Building Liaison for Technology) presented to our faculty on a new and exciting "toy" we have received! Although we have a few teachers who still consider the overhead projector their best-friend, we now have the option of using a document camera.  This is a small, 3-piece device that literally takes the place of the overhead. Teachers can now use this camera to project images or worksheets. With the accompany of the white-board, you can still manage to wipe-on and off just as you would in the past! We're pretty excited to try these out.  (Image from : www.vtcexpress.com/.../document-cameras.asp) It was fun to hear about the challenges some feel they will face with such adaptability.  I am actually looking forward to implementing this gadget and doing some collaboration with my students during math class. 

The second run-in I have had this week with my 21st Century learning is interpreting messages on blogs. I have learned so much exploring different Kindergarten blogs and deciding what I want to do in my own classroom. However, I decided to post to two blogs about different learning activities that are taking place in their classrooms- and well, I thought I would get a response.  No luck.  Instead, I have a message on both blogs stating "Awaiting Moderation".  When I read this the first time, I literally thought- Awaiting WHAT?!  I had to go back to my best friend, Google and check it out. I learned that it means the author of the blog has not approved my message for posting yet.  And then through some communication with my great colleague and group partner, Nancy- I learned that this may never happen! It could depend on how often the author checks their page. I looked for a link to notify the author like Nancy suggested, but have not found one for either blog. So, here I wait......
In the meantime, feel free to check out these Kindergarten blogs in which I left my messages at and you can get some great ideas for a primary classroom!
http://kinderblogger.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/poetry-ideas/#comment-557
* Great resources for teaching poetry within a language arts program.

http://mrskilburnkiddos.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/were-on-our-way-were-on-our-way-on-our-way-to-mrs-kilburns-farm/#comment-5988
* I found a wonderful farm unit that ties in with what we will be studying in May.

Within this class, I posted on Nancy and Nina's blogs- which can be located at:

http://a-digital-diva.blogspot.com/

http://capuanoland.blogspot.com/2011/04/lap-tops-in-classroom.html#comments

Kindergarten Bears....and EAGLES!

At the beginning of our school year, one of my colleagues in a different building started a Kindergarten Wiki. The purpose of this was for all of the Kindergarten teachers to share our favorite sites, PowerPoints and resources. I have logged on a few times throughout the year and contributed. I have found that it is slightly difficult to add to the wiki page we have created, but very helpful once accomplished. This week I decided to revisit the Kindergarten Bears wiki. You can find this space at http://kindergartenbears.wikispaces.com/Language+Arts.  Now that I have been in this class for almost 6 weeks, I feel as though our space is PATHETIC! I am making it a priority to get in there and "spruce" it up- SOON.  Today, I went in and added our upcoming Decodable Book (Storytown/Harcourt) resource. We all use this book in language arts, some of us in guided reading groups. Anyways, I created a PowerPoint that shares the book so that my fellow Kindergarten teachers can use this tool on our classroom projectors and do a whole group lesson with it. My story addition is the link with Yum, Yum, Yum.  I'm hoping that someone will be able to incorporate this within their teaching soon.  I know my little 'eagles' will enjoy reading it in our classroom! Happy reading!

Spreading my wings...ready to SOAR

My first attempt with Blogging...I've decided to give it a go and spread those wings.  I'll start by explaining that our elementary school mascot is the eagle. I feel like my classroom is my "nest" of baby eagles.  With that said- I will admit, I'm a regular Facebook fan. I have so many friends and family members who have created blogs and update regularly. I do find it fascinating to read what they have been up to from time to time.  Soooo...I decided that because I work so diligently each week to create a newsletter that I send home with my students, I must certainly be able to do the same online. Only better : )
Today I spent a lot of time browsing blogs. I found so many awesome resources that I felt like I could get lost within the creativity. I need to be doing these things in my classroom!  I searched all areas and subjects- you name it, I found it.  I then signed up for my account and am now ready to go.  My time today was pretty much focused on searching and gaining ideas. I also spent some time "playing" with the blogger tools to try and find a design that will best fit my "beginner" skill levels.