Final Reflection

Final Reflection Slate

Enjoy my final reflection. I love creating projects on Spark Adobe :)

Not only my classroom

When I learn a new skill in our class the first thing I can think of is how to bring it into my classroom what things do I want to try the most what things will benefit my students the most. My students get so excited when I show them a new application and they get time to start implementing it. Many of these things seem to be benefiting my students, engaging them, and teaching them new skills.

It takes a while for me to realize that a lot of these skills and applications I can use to benefit my self as well. I have been implementing technology to help with my business and using social media to display specials of the day, getting to know baristas, networking to find private recycle companies to help me and I have been using blogging and twitter to help me expand my knowledge about the coffee industry. It is sad that it too me this long to find out about all of this free knowledge already out there but I am so glad that I am expanding my knowledge in many ways. My employees are so happy about me creating a website where we can access all of our documents in one place and refer to them whenever we want. For the first time scheduling and shift trading is all done online, inventory is done on google docs and such much more. I spend a solid half hour a week just brainstorming ways technology can help me and my business expand and I am glad this class has helped me open my mind to all of these possibilities.

Thank you #teched

Service Learning

Interesting I didn't realize I knew and had learned so much about blogging until our service learning group came together to discuss our findings. I thought 8 different blogging platforms would be near impossible but we had a list that was much longer. It was nice to put a lot of our knowledge on one site for others to access. I wonder how others will be able to locate it. Will it come up in a Google Search? hmmm...

My favorite experiences with blogging is Feedly. I love hearing about other peoples stories or guidance on topics that interest me. I don't have to pay to read them (unlike most books) and they are a super short read. Seriously so glad I discovered Feedly.

Difficulty with student blogging. I am trying to make student blogging safe so I approve anything my students post or comments others post before making them public. I am now wondering if I want to do that again next year. It is hard for me to go through and make each post public. I am greatly slacking in this and it is creating extra work for me. I think for now the district likes the security of the teacher approving everything but I hope once more students in the district start classroom blogging they will become more flexible with this.  I feel bad saying that because I am trying to make my job safer not thinking about student safety but I feel like if students posted something they are not supposed to the other students will read it and tattle on them immediately (like always).

#blogging #classblog

Cyber Bulling

It is sad how prominent bullying is in general. It is also sad that it is a real thing that students suffer. I think parents should be checking in with their kiddos and seeing what they are doing on the internet and discussing their interests with them. I don't think parents should control students passwords and accounts to the extreme but being aware for sure. That way if something like bullying is occurring they can reflect and problem solve on it together. I think the digital citizenship trainings is a great place to start. I think each grade level should focus on a different component of digital citizenship and it can be district wide even if it is just a 10 minute focus once a week.

My school district had a digital citizen training night where they discussed with students and families how important it is to be mindful of your online identity and how it leaves an ever lasting impact. My principal says you are creating an icon you want others to see. What is it you want to portray to others?

I can see how easy it is to cyber bully. I was never apart of it nor have I seen it but it is so easy to instant message somebody or post something without thinking it through. The positive thing about cyber bullying is the victims have more time to come up with a response or they may chose not to respond. They have more time to reflect on the comment and get advice from others if needed. The sad part about cyber bulling is it can be made so public and cover a large area of people very quickly. I could see how many would be hesitant to cyber bully because their is evidence to show what you did but in person face to face it is a lot harder to prove something it is more of taking one persons word over another if they are not telling the truth.

Bullying in general is an issue it isn't only online but more commonly face-to-face. We need to teach our children and students the importance of being kind and respectful to others as well as how to stand up for ourselves in a respectful way. We need to teach them the signs of bullying what to do if they are being bullied and how to report it. Cyber bullying alone is not the issue but hopefully teaching digital citizenship and building respectful relationships can keep our students out of a possible bad situation.

#cyberbully #digitalcitizen

Blogging Time

My students are finally blogging but now the company is wanting to collect payment. I don't think kidblog was the best choice I thought I was doing kidzblog with a z but I forgot the z when I created it but I thought I would give it a try anyway. This page has some good ideas of how teachers are using blogging in their classrooms. I would like to use mine for a science journal as well. I know students love science and it is a great way to share their learnings. But the one reason I like doing book reports better is because each student is sharing about a different book they read where in science I feel like the class would all be sharing the same or similar discoveries and they wouldn't want to read each others posts.

I think I want to focus in on one topic for blogging such as book reports etc.The webiste mentions using it for a digital portfolio. I think it would be great for older grades to use and share their identity and their voice but I just don't know about 2nd graders having a digital portfolio...

I have been using this spreadsheet for blogging that my profession Jane shared. It has been helpful. I used it to show my principal blog examples and to research different blogging platforms.

I love viewing multiple classroom blogs. At first it was hard for me to find and locate example blogs. This page has multiple blogs and gave me tons of ideas of what to do in my classroom. I did notice tho that most of these pages have photographs of students faces....

#kidblog #classblog #bloglife

Privacy

One of the readings this week Champions of Children's Privacy discussed how we should allow kiddos to make a decision on their identity not base it on collecting their private information to target them and provide them with ads. Some schools are making it so students can't use google because they don't want the students to go to forums where their data and information is collected. I don't agree with not allowing the students to go to these sites. I strongly feel that if you educate students about them collecting information and you tell them the causes and what they do with the information and they still chose to go to the web pages that is completely their decision. We should educate students on how to use the internet safely not prevent them from using it. Students should make an informed decision about their identity. I understand how website collecting information can effect these form decisions but I think we need to educate them on that. Just because a ton of rehab and drug addiction sites come to my email and have advertisement popping up doesn't mean I need to go to a rehab. The internet only knows a part of my identity and it confused me owning coffee stands named Addicted with thinking I have an Addiction. I still know who I really am and I was still capable of creating my own identify. We should teach our kiddos how to utilize their online identity. I think the technology teachers in our school should instruct the students how to create a positive identity for themselves.

Personally, I like the fact that I have ads popping up of things I like and that I am interested in I have found a lot of interesting stuff this way. Sometime it makes it really tempting for me to buy items that I can't afford but it taunts me by consistently throwing it in my face. Like most things it has its benefits and drawbacks. #teched

Blogging Group

Jane tweeted me an excellent excel sheet of different blogging platforms. I just created a kidblog.com URL and added the majority of my students. It took me some playing around and it was a bit hard to figure out. I was looking up articles for blogging in the classroom. It seems like a pretty popular thing I am surprised I haven't heard about it until now. My big question is how do I get my students some followers that will provide them with feedback on their blogs? I will continue to seek more information on this aspect. One blog stated that:"Number 3: Blogs, because of their ease of use, and because of the context of news and editorial column writing, have become a highly effective way to help students to become better writers. Research has long shown that students write more, write in greater detail, and take greater care with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, when they are writing to an authentic audience over the Internet. - See more at: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech217.shtml#sthash.ugRwytB3.dpuf" I could see my students being more cautious about their spelling if there was a larger audience viewing there writing. But I am wondering if they are actually writing better or if they are using spell check to assist them?

I learned that for students it is better to have a blogging classroom software downloaded so they can just click on that instead of connecting to a URL. I have KidBlog but I see a lot of good feedback about Kidzblog I want to try out multiple platforms to see which one I prefer for my students.

It was recommended that I have to view all blogs by my students before they are published but I don't know if I can keep up with all this...

#blogging #classblog

Project Learning

In this weeks reading page 55-71 it focused on Project learning. The author thought back to everything they had learned in school and knew that everything they built and created were the things that they remembered the most. I always think about this with my class. I am so over busy work and worksheets. But it is so hard to make every lesson hands-on. My teams focus this year has been making amazing anchor charts for the students to refer to and hopefully we can use them for multiple years to come but I am just not sure this is the best use of my time. I would love to use this time next year to make more hands-on learning bringing in guest speakers, going on field trips, having assemblies, building stuff. If I could pick one main focus each month and make it a more unique experience then I could do it again year and year to build on the previous year. I want more resources for 2nd grade where I can find more projects students can do.

I love science so much because most of it is hands-on and real life experiments this is hard to do with reading unless it is a unit theme. Any ideas? What main projects should I start with? I will continue to brainstorm and build on this. I want my students to have the most beneficial remember able learning experience possible. If anybody has suggestions please share. As of right now the best lessons I have for these are my pottery lesson to learn about the Spanish culture, my primary color lesson where we paint canvases, my engineering unit where we create hand pollinators, life cycle where we raise a butterfly, weather unit where we go outside and do weather reports and experiments, animal reports where we go to the zoo and have the reptile man join us at school, and recycling where we have guest speakers an assembly plant flowers and clean up the play ground. #handsonlearning #projectlearning

Inquiry Group: Blogging

So far the big questions in my group is about parent permission and school permission. All four of us in the blog inquiry group wanted our classrooms to jump in and start a classroom blog and do a quad blog (I just learned what a quad blog is, pretty much four classrooms blog together read each others blogs and provide comments etc.). Problem is not all of our principals feel comfortable having students on a classroom blogging site. My purpose for wanting to have a classroom blog is to give my students a new audience to share their work with and to get them excited to show their work. I want them to start with bi-weekly book reports and take off from there. I know this wouldn't be ideal for all my 2nd graders but I can think of 12 of them that would be in love with this. All four of us teachers work in the same school district so you would think we all would have the same policy on classroom blogs but some are more conservative then others.

My principal seemed to like the idea I promised no student pictures that could identify them and no last names and I wouldn't use any city or state information. She wanted me to send her the link to our blogs when they were up and running so she could stay up to date. Additionally, she asked for some example blogs so she knew what to expect. I thought this was a good supportive response from her.

I have been learning so much about blogging. I just learned how to add my twitter post to a live feed on the side panel of my blog. I learned how to do a blog roll. I created two different blog accounts one on blogger and one on Wordpress. It has been nice to compare them both. I like looking at other peoples blogs to get ideas on how to lay my blog out.

I like finding bloggers who have similar interest as me to follow. I use feedly to add my favorite bloggers and stay up to date. Although I am having a very hard time keeping up to date with them I feel like this summer will be a good time to get updated on all my wonderful blogging colleagues.
#inquiryblog #bloglife

Book Filming

My first time creating a youtube video well uploading a video on youtube. It took me 30 minutes to figure it out but I feel so accomplished. Check out my groups awesome AMPLIFY video. It is a lesson in the text we all thought was useful and we all want to bring to our classrooms. Additionally we added a quick summary so you can get an idea of what the book was about. Enjoy! #amplify #teched

Kindle Fire in the classroom

Ahhhh what a nightmare. I see why some people give up on technology too soon sometimes it can be very difficult and overwhelming. Thankfully, I wasn't in it alone my students had my back. I just received my first two Kindle Fires. My co-worker uses them in her classroom. I didn't realize she just uses the apps they come with until after I received mine. I thought they would be perfect for surfing the web and downloading apps like Padlet, Blogger, and QR codes. It actually didn't have a lot of the apps that I just assumed all tablets could receive all apps (my bad). I downloaded QR code readers on them and I borrowed 6 more from my Math coach. I thought I was all set for my Earth Day lesson. But the QR code reader only worked on one of the QR codes but my iPad could read all the QR codes no problem. The Kindles would crash every 5 minutes or so and would ask for my password again every 10 minutes like it kept forgetting it. So I decided only to do the Kindle Fires with the student apps that came with it on one of mine they were working at a steady speed but on the other one it could never open the app that came standard with the reader. They were so slow. It wasn't very user friendly.
I think I will use my Kindle Fires for downloading books for the Kiddos and hopefully they will be able to do their Scholastic New on it. I haven't tried that yet. I always wondered why more classrooms didn't use Kindle Fires in the classroom they are so affordable. But I need to come at it again and keep on uncovering the best way to utilize them. I don't want to give up on them but next time I will be requesting more iPads.
#tabletclassroom #teched

Book Circle: Amplify read

Students as specialists: Page 71. I used this today in my classroom my kiddos loved it!! First the expert loved teaching his peers and second of all the students loved a peer teaching them. The student I chose is very smart and very hyper he loved working hard when he is engaged and can easily interfere with other students learning if he isn't engaged. This was the perfect thing for him he was so clear and concise with his peers. So glad I read about this strategy and sad I didn't think about it early!

Safeguarding our intellectual property: page 73. I really want to implement this within my classroom we have a talk about respecting books and caring for them but we don't really get into respecting technology. They know they get in trouble every time they break one of my headphones but I don't think I ever taught them how to use them properly so that is my bad! Glad I have this lesson plan to carry out.

I do think it is important for all my students to know they are an expert at something.

I love the idea of taking pictures of students that are using their devices appropriately to really award the good behavior.

I like the idea of having a listening signal when using a device but this doesn't apply to my 3 device classroom yet. Hopefully some day!

#BCAmplify #teched

Ed Tech: Inequalities

In the Ed Tech Inequalities article it discusses how a school in Tennessee is under the public eye debating whether or not it is legal for staff members to be able to search students phones at any time and regulate their social media if it is on school grounds. I do not think that should be legal and I don't see why they feel that would be beneficial. I often wonder about this stuff. At the beginning of each school year I have to sign a paper for my district saying my phone can be searched if there is probable cause and if a warrant is filled I have to give up all of my emails and text.

We had a staff meeting where our principal showed us some items that students at our school posted on their social media. My principal often checks her staffs social media but there is no way she can keep up with checking 700 students social media accounts as well. These post were brought to her attention by a parent. The post were extremely aggressive. She shared with us that she was having a meeting with the parents and the students would face a one day suspension and a social media training course. Pretty sure it was a one day suspension. I was wondering if students were even allowed to get in trouble at school for something they did at home? I feel like home and school should be supportive of each other and in frequent contact but getting punished at school for something you did at home just didn't sit well with me and it didn't really make sense to me. I feel like there are laws against this? #techprivacy

going electronic with my business

I was leaving class last week and had this thought of ways I can get rid of using paper and make things more electronic. I thought about when I use paper the most and I was thinking for taking notes and written responses with my students in the classroom. Then, it hit me I was thinking only of me and my classroom for my coffee stands I go through a ton of paper. Every night at each stand my employees write their inventory on a piece of paper and send it to me. I hate this method.. .but it works. When it is time for me to do inventory I have to go through all my previous text to see what each employee recorded because the AM girl might have written something the PM girl didn't or maybe the PM girl found an item that the AM girl recorded so I am going through 6 text of inventory a day and comparing what they need then writing it down on my own final list. I wanted a way where the inventory could be interactive at any time they can delete something or add something immediately and it would be live to me and the other employees so we can all see what the other barista needs. How could I do this? Is there an app for it? Then it hit me GOOGLE DOCS!! I was beyond excited I went home and created an inventory document and send a mass message out to my baristas to download the app. Some of them were very excited others were like I don't use technology I won't be able to figure it out without even downloading the app one was frustrated to create a google account. About 60% of them have been doing an amazing job with it. One girl her phone is too old so it won't let her download the app because she needs a newer software so I am having her use it through the email link but it takes her phone awhile to upload it. Not sure there is anything I can do about that. I want to try it for another week and if it is going well I am going to force all the girls to use this. I am wondering if they are expected to do this online if I need to provide like an iPad for the stand?  I don't think I can require the girls to use their phones for business? It takes me a bit longer to type inventory on a phone instead of writing it on paper but it is so much faster for us to look at the inventory list I feel like I have saved about 20 minutes a day so far and I am greatly enjoying it and so is my manager! So glad I could bring this tech class to my business to make our lives easier and save trees! #techbusiness #googledocs

Music Video

My staff makes an annual music video for the kiddos. Here is this years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inWNc_cc3ZU&feature=youtu.be

Book Circle: Amplify

Have you all had any big take aways that you are implementing in your classroom? I am wondering what I should use to get the shower curtain to hang up because I don't have a shower rod? I am thinking of getting a huge red and green light to display so classmates can see when a recording is happening. I love page 70 where it list all the troubleshooting. Normally though with my 2nd graders it isn't troubleshooting it is them not remembering how to get to the website or they don't know how to type it in. I put cheat sheets on the computers but they still need me or somebody else to type in the web address. I am wondering if for things like Moby Max and Tumblebooks can we put an app for those on the desktop so students can just click on those? I am not sure how apps on a desktop work? I have a classroom website where students can access all of their webpages but it is kind of hard to get to a multi step process. It is a district issued page that every teacher has. I am thinking it might be better to purchase a website that is easier for them to spell like CarlsonB20.com? I want to ask my principal about this or if they want everything on the district page. Do you all have a webpage that your students use to access information and webpages?
I love the idea on page 62 of partnering up with other class rooms and having them be an audience for the blogs. My students would really enjoy this. I am worried that the other class or my class won't be able to keep up with the blog comment demands?

Social Media Sales

For my "book circle" I started following the author on Twitter. I was amazed by how long it took me to find content on her page that was from her (the author) I scrolled forever from people referencing her in a post or people putting up pictures of her. She seems like she has been doing a lot of Skype conferences with schools and hosting events. Whenever people post things that include her name she seems to respond to every one of them.

My book circle group and I created the hashtag BCAmplify thinking it would be creative and unique Book Circle Amplify (the book title) I was writing a post to my group specifically not including the authors name and used our hashtag and within 2 minutes she had started following me on twitter and answered my questions about the reading. I don't even know how she found my hashtag like was she specifically looking for it? It is crazy how much social media can be used to market yourself. Instantly I felt a connection with her and wanted to learn more from her. I was proud of how actively involved she was on helping educators understand her information. I feel like just keeping up with social media could be a full time job. I am wondering if she is on spring break as well or she is having her students run her Twitter account. I doubt the students are running her personal account tho.

I want to be more involved with the coffee community around the world on social media. I feel like I do a good job with my local customer base posting pictures and updates but not the greater population of answering peoples coffee or business questions. I feel like it would be a good way for me to give back.

Book Circle #Amplify

I read this book just in time for my Service Learning project. I used a lot of ideas out of it for my Service Learning.
This book is pretty user friendly but it doesn't seem to be based around much data. I am wondering how their students do academically and if they are noticing a huge academic difference benefit?

A lot of their practices are on students helping each other. I keep trying this in my class but my students are so intoned to what they are doing it is hard for them to stop and help their neighbor get logged in I started to feel guilty always relying on my students to help so I try to fix most technology issues myself. I think I need to do what they did and have a discussion about how there is only one teacher so they need to help each other.

I love following the author's twitter accounts they have some really need stuff. I stole some of it for my classroom :).

I noticed their kids have ear buds for headphones I am wondering if each student has their own set and how they store them? I am debating if I should go that route. My students break headphones weekly.

iPad vs. Kindle Fire

I have been working really hard in getting more technology resources in my 2nd grade classroom for my students and I to explore and grow with. I posted a donors choose and received my first iPad. Then I received two Kindle Fires for my classroom. The Kindle Fires cost $50 each and the iPad mini cost $250 each so for the price of one iPad I could have 5 Kindle Fires. I kind of regretted getting the iPad instead of 5 Kindle Fires once I realized the Kindle Fire has pretty much every app I will be using them for besides iMovie. I will be using chatterbox, QR codes, Star Fall, and Sushi Monster. If I find any more beneficial apps for my students I will access their value and possibly add those as well. So all of you iPad lovers out there I want to know why people spend so much more money to get the iPad? Is there some big benefit I am not seeing correctly? Before I get more Kindle Fires I want to make sure I am not missing a bigger picture with the iPad.

Additionally, if you are an educator and you use your iPad or Kindle Fire for beneficial activities with your students please feel free to share them I am looking for engaging, creative, beneficial ways to incorporate them into the classroom more regularly.

Thank you
#beduc566 #kindlefire #teched

April Fool's Day in the classroom

Some ideas for April Fool's Day.

A 3rd grade teacher and I are switching classrooms and telling our students that we had an unexpected child birth.

Additionally, we are handing out Brown E's wrapped in foil.

This blog has a bunch of resources for an educator on April Fool's Day.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/april-fools-classroom-ideas-matt-davis