WOW! Is My Fellows Year Really Almost Over?

It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone by. I remember thinking this summer how I couldn;t wait until I could come intot he school year, make mistakes and learn how to become a better teacher. I thank God for my expereince at Rock Bridge this school year, the faculty that surrounded me, the wonderful mentor teacher who kept me sane and taught me so much and most of all the amazingly wonderful students that I had the privilege of serving this school year. I am currently in the process of writing thank you notes to all my studnets this year thanking them for my great expereince for helping me become a better teacher and also apologizing because I know I wasn't the best that I'm going to hopefully become.

On to technology:

Initially when I worte my technology plan I thought I was going to do a themes activity that called for my students to research a region of teh world and create a presentation explaining how our World Studies themes have aided in the development of that region from its incipiency until today. At that time I did not know that that was a componnet of our 2nd semester comprhensive final therefore I could not do it. Instead I tried a similar activity with my African American Expereince course. My partner and I came up with an idea to have students do a virtual scrapbook presentation. Groups were comprised of 3 individuals who read different independent reading novels with similar themes. I wrote about this assignment in an earlier blog, but I was not completely satisfied with the outcome. I decided to give it one more try and in teh same course I had students do one component to a Civil Rights Museum. Though I did not do the assignment with the original technology plan in mind, after revisiting all the objectives and purposes I realized they were modified in a way that aligned with my orginal intent for my World Studies assignment. The groups honed their research skills, learned to use various search engines, utilized various programs in Microsoft Office such as Movie Maker, Power Point, etc., and constructed knowledge in a fun, entertaining, and interesting way through technology.

Each group was assigned one important person, event, or organization from the Civil Rights Era, researched it, and created their own individual section of a virtual museum. The assignmnet was to be interactive and incorporate quotes, symbolic artifacts, music, and a variety of pictures. The plan was to put all the projects together to create an entire Virtual Museum of the Civil Rights Movement.

The assignment did not work out as planned again because the directions were not clear. Though I had the vision in my head, it was not successfully conveyed to the students. I do believe that I will attempt to do this next year and hopefully we can produce something that is worthy of it's own wbsite, with links, and other interactive facets.

Overall I am pleased with the amount of technology that I used in the classroom this school year. This course pushed me to use my resources and to think of ways to effectively use technology to "spice up" my lessons. I feel that I will definitely continue to try to implement technology into my activities and assessments as I become more comfortable with technology use.

Vignettes

VENT

I can definitely feel the time crunch as the end of the year approaches. This has been the shortest school year I’ve ever experienced. Fellows coursework and comps papers are becoming more stressful as deadlines approach and classroom work is becoming very demanding and time is running out. Being on the “other side” of education has been very eye opening this year and I’m thankful for all my experiences although, at times, I feel a bit overwhelmed. Sorry for the vent, but I had to get it out.

YouTUBE

As of late, the greatest news that I’ve received concerning the use of technology in the classroom is that Rock Bridge Fire Walls have been changed to allow teachers to sign on to YouTube with our CPS password. There are many great educational resources on this site and it will greatly benefit the students and classroom instruction. I used You Tube once in the classroom already in teaching a short WWI parable called “The Last Flower.” I also have been proactive in attempting to consider the possibility of using it when I plan my lessons for my African American Experience course.

RESEARCH

As the year ends I have also been making sure that my students are honing their research skills. My World Studies class is researching the extent and evolution of non-Western countries’ self-determination from the age of imperialism to the falling of the Berlin Wall. The first time I wrote about research skills in the classroom I explained how we gave students key words and sites to visit. Our focus now is to see how well students can research on their own. The supplemental instruction is focusing on how to determine a valid site from one that is useless or unreliable. I feel that allowing students to research in this way will better benefit them for the classes they take in the future, and for my seniors, it will aid them as they enter into a world that will not make the many facets of research so plain and straight forward.