EDU 408 Class Reflection

During this class, I have learned so much about teaching science. I have gained a ton of different resources that I can use inside the classroom to teach, plan and integrate science. So many teachers all over the country and beyond barley have the time to breath during the day and for many schools and many teachers, science gets pushed back on the back burner. It is so very sad that science isn't a bigger part in schools, because the students LOVE science!! One thing I learned during this class as well is that there are tons of Apps and creative hands on ideas for science. Science is such a hands on content area.  The method that I feel that I would use the most inside my classroom is an anchor chart. I love anchor charts because I feel that they are a way to let students explain their thinking and give them recognition when they get to help create something in their own way as a class. In regards to the apps that are out there that can be used to create a fun, engaging technology filled environment. I feel that technology is a huge part of the education world in today's society and I feel like students love and thrive when they get the chance to work with technology. Some of the Apps and Tools I have learned about this semester have  a broad  group of purposes. The apps I learned about that can be used for Social Bookmarking are Diigo,Scoop it, Edshelf, Educlipper and Symbaloo. Some presentation software that can be used to create engaging and creative presentations are Google Slides, Haiku Deck, Prezi, Zoho Presentation. Some apps or tools that I can use to create formative or non-traditional quizzes are Testmoz, Quizalize, Flip Quiz, Riddle, Quiz Beach. Apps for digital portfolios are SeeSaw, Pathbrite, Silk, and Weebly. I really want to try to use technology to drive education in my classroom and I think these resources are a great way to start.
When it came to forming the lesson plans the hardest part for me would probably of had to been making sure that the elements of what I am going to teach and assess is following and aligning with the standards. It is super easy to come up with these awesome engaging activities, especially for Science because it is such a hands-on subject. For the lesson plan, it was super helpful for me to break it up into smaller chunks! That was the best way to tackle it! Another hard part is trying to figure out where I wanted the students to go. I kept taking breaks to look back into the standard to see if my activity and exploration was heading down the right road. The lesson plans are not part of one big unit so, for me it wasn't like some of the other lesson plans that I have been working to complete that are breaking down one big standard into a 3-5 day lesson. Since Science doesn't make it into the classroom as much as it should in a lot of cases, the biggest thing for me that I want to give to my students when I get a classroom is the fun, engaging hands on time that science allows for. I WILL DO EVERYTHING I CAN FOR SCIENCE TO BE IN MY CLASSROOM!

Formative Assessment

Formative Assessments are meant to be used during instruction rather than at the end of a unit or course of study like Summative Assessments. Formative Assessments are about checking for students understanding in an effective way in order to guide instruction as a teacher. Formative Assessments are used to see what the student "understand" and also what students as a whole or in large chunks 'did not get'. We use these assessments as a chance to guide instruction and go back to reteach something maybe in a different way if as a teacher we see that large chunks or majority of the class 'didn't get it'. Going back and having to reteach is okay, it happens to everyone. If a whole large group of students 'didn't get' the lesson I can't stand hearing teachers say "they just didn't get it" , maybe the problem isn't with the students, maybe it was delivery or the way the lesson was taught! Maybe the teacher should assess themselves to see if there is something they could do differently to help make the students understand and make them successful.
In regards to Science Instruction, it is extremely important to use Formative Assessments. As a teacher you always have to ask yourself if what you are teaching 'follows  the curriculum' and if you are using Formative Assessments, it will be easier as a teacher to keep track of students learning. As you're working through a unit, assessing after every part of the lesson even if its just an exit ticket is important in keeping up with where the class is and if everyone is on the same page.
Formative Assessments are designed around what you want or need students to take away from a unit or lesson. You can use Formative Assessments to also give students the opportunity to ask questions about things that are un clear.
There are Pros and Cons of both Summative Assessments and Formative Assessments. Love Joy Amargo, Teacher at SJIDI shared many pros and cons for Summative Assessments that I highly agree with.

 

Dr. Nesa Sasser, studio D writes advantages and disadvantages of Formative Assessments in her article What are the Advantages & Disadvantages of Formative Assessments. A pro of Formative Assessments is the fact that they are not graded, which takes the anxiety away from students. It also eliminates the idea that they must get everything right. Another pro is that they serve as practice for the students and allows them to assistance and immediate feedback from the teacher along the way before the 'big test at the end'. Another Pro is that teachers can check for understanding in the event that students are struggling during the lesson. Teachers address these issues early on instead of waiting until the end of the unit. Teachers also have to do less re-teaching in the end because many of the problems were worked out and addressed before the final test.

A con for Formative Assessments for many teachers is sacrificing time to assess during the lesson and fear that they may not even finish the lesson. Time is a evil thing that teachers fight against every single day. Another Con is that teachers may feel the need to rush through a series of units when they feel that they are pressed for time, which causes students to lack mastery once the assessment is given at the end of the unit. Knowing that Formative Assessments usually have little to no point value unlike Summative Assessments leads to the last Con I can find with Formative Assessments, "students may not take the assessments seriously, which may cause teachers to misread feedback from students".

Online Resources

What is or could be happening in the classroom that could not be duplicated by a computer/device?

The answer should never be "Nothing", because if that was the case then why would we even need teachers. If students could learn all they ever needed to know online, then teachers would be pointless, right? According to The Washington Post, "no screen will ever replace a creative, engaged, interactive, relevant, and inspiring teacher, especially one who takes advantage of the precious face-to-face experience of people learning together". The post also says that "Collective, communal, collaborative learning is key to many of the ways we all work now, often in collaborative and distributed ways". The strength of a safe, loving and caring classroom community can not be built online. Working together in groups and being hands on can not be done on a device. Getting feedback or sharing your work with friends and classmates and having the ability to have that one on one face to face conversations with other peers or the teacher is not something that can be duplicated online. There are many ways to share, video or get feedback on a device and there are of course thousands of ways to learn on a device, but it can never come close to the experience of being in a classroom.

What is or could be happening on computers/devices that could not otherwise happen in the classroom? 

In an article by Dr. Bruce Perry, Using Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom , he  explains why the young generation is so much more engaged and centered around technology. He said that "Modern technologies are very powerful because they rely on one of the most powerful genetic biases we do have — the preference for visually presented information. The human brain has a tremendous bias for visually presented information. Television, movies, videos, and most computer programs are very visually oriented and therefore attract and maintain the attention of young children." Sometimes devices can take away the real life social interactions which we need to be successful in the working class community. Dr. Perry also describes three types of skills that students also need to be successful, "the technologies that benefit young children the greatest are those that are interactive and allow the child to develop their curiosity, problem solving and independent thinking skills." Another thing that devices allow is self pacing and the ability to easily differentiate activities, games, information and assessments for each individual student. As we all know a entire class of students obviously are not anywhere close to the same level in practically any levels. So, using devices helps make that differentiation much easier.

How could online resources be used to provide experiences that would otherwise not be available for students?

Using technology in the classroom links teachers to their students and to professional content, resources, and systems to help them improve their own instruction and personalize learning. According to an article posted by the U.S Department of Education "Online learning opportunities and the use of open educational resources and other technologies can increase educational productivity by accelerating the rate of learning; reducing costs associated with instructional materials or program delivery; and better utilizing teacher time." Using online tools and resources helps creativity and imagination. The opportunities within technology are limitless and showing the students of this upcoming generation how to work and use these technologies is like handing them the world of opportunities at their finger tips.

Science Apps

With the ever advancing world of technology, there are so many apps and sites out there that can be used as great resources inside the classroom. Having technology in the classroom is so crucial in todays society; the children we are teaching are growing up having the world of resources and opportunities at their finger tips. Today, I want to show you 3 Apps that can be used to support instruction and integrate technology in the classroom. The first App is Video Science ; it is a FREE App which makes it that much better already. Video Science is a rapid growing library of over 80 hands-on Science lessons that are great for home and the classroom. These short videos demonstrate inexpensive and easy to recreate experiments that are designed to inspire and excite kids of all ages. VideoScience is hosted by Dan Menelly, a Science Teacher at the UN International School and a 2010 Einstein Fellow with the National Science Foundation in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure. This App has al kinds of experiments ranging over many levels of difficulty. There are experiments from Pre-K all the way to adults who just love science! Hands-on is what Science is ALL ABOUT, that's a huge part as to why so many kids love learning science and why so many students are engaged and excited to experiment. This app is a go to place when your in need for experiment ideas that your kids or students will love and be completely engaged in from start to finish. It is proven from years and years of research that students learn and retain more information when they are engaged, and what better way to do that than being hands on and interacting with science.


The next App I want to introduce to you is called Khan Academy , this App is also FREE and it is a AWESOME App that can be used to learn almost anything! There are over 10,000 videos and explanations at your fingertips in math, science, economics, history, and much, much more. There are so many content areas that you can use this one App for inside the classroom. But, in regards to Science, you can give your students the opportunity to learn using videos, interactive exercises, and in-depth articles in a broad domain of science areas including biology, chemistry, and physics. Not only can Khan Academy be used to further students leaning and used to support science teaching instruction in the classroom, it can be used for ASSESSMENING! Yes, you read it right! Khan Academy has over 40,000 interactive Common Core aligned practice questions are that are included with instant feedback and step-by-step hints. Students can follow along with what you’re learning or teaching in class at the time, or they can move through a curriculum in a certain order at their own pace. This App is a great tool for any teacher wanting to integrate technology, get their kids engaged while still being able to easily assess and track each students progress on a regular basis.

The last App that I am going to introduce today is BrainPOP® Featured Movie  there is a free version of this App that works great, but for $6.99 a month you can have unlimited access to all of BrainPOP’s 750+ movies and quizzes plus the free daily "Featured Movie" and its quiz. Students love watching videos and will become very familiar with the main characters Tim and Moby. There are tons of videos created for different units in science that are extremely interesting and help students to learn about Science and other content areas in a new way. The videos are very informational, but students will enjoy learning the content much more when it is interesting and displayed in a way that they can relate to or understand. This app is a great tool to use to support teaching instruction and videos appeal much more to all the different types of learners.

Content Vocabulary

While I have not yet witnessed Science being taught in my internship classroom, I have seen quite a bit of ELA and Math being taught. For this post I would like to use the way that I have seen Math Vocabulary taught in my 1st grade Internship Classroom. When the class switches to Math, the teacher hands out their "Math Journal". The teacher starts with one word at a time. the first word that the students needed to learn was "equation". The paper is folded long ways down the middle and on one side the student wrote the vocabulary word and the definition in 'kid friendly' language.

The example will be pictured below.

The student then got to pick a way to explain that vocabulary word in picture form. Each vocabulary word had to have at least 2 pictures for each word. The teacher intentionally uses the vocabulary words regularly.

In ELA the students have a "word wall", each week the teacher gives them 10 new words, and gives them a piece of notebook paper which she has already folded to give 6 blocks on each side. In the top left block the students write their name and in the top right the student writes out the entire date for example : September 16, 2016.

Then with the remaining 10 blocks the student writes each of the 10 words (one in each box) and has to draw and color a picture that matches that word. Like the example below except they have to color it.

I like both strategies for vocabulary and the students seem to like it as well, but the only thing I wish was that once the students completed this activity they had a place to keep it and come back to it later. The teacher has the students turn in the paper and then she puts them up in her folder of the students work. I feel like if the students did this type of vocabulary in there ELA notebook they could go back to those words later if they need them to use in writing. The "word wall" is a good idea to except for the fact that the wall just includes the words. I think a better way to incorporate the word wall would be to include pictures representing the word or using it correctly in a sentence with words such as "am". If the students do the work and turn it in, then they don't have the chance to use the words the way that need to. I feel like they should have access to those words, especially in writing. Instead of doing the paper with the 10 words, maybe using the idea of "vocabulary rings". If the students use a notecard or index card they could put 2 words and pictures on the card (one on front and one on back), then the cards could be hole punched and placed on a ring for the students to pull out and come back to later on if they need help with a  word. I think the teacher just needs to pay more attention to 'if the vocabulary is sticking with the students' because drawing and writing out the word once probably isn't going to be helpful in them remembering how to spell, use and understand a word.



Final Reflection

I have completed my quest in winning an A in my technology class. For my last and final quest I was asked to reflect on the semester. Throughout the semester I have learned so much from the quest for this class! At first I wasn't a big fan of creating all these accounts and posting all over the internet but I took it as a adventure and learned from everything that I accomplished. I have learned about and how to use SOOO many tools for integrating technology into the classroom. Knowing what is out there for teachers to use is important.  I have learned about TPACK and how to repurpose things I may already have and use them to create something completely different. One of my favorite quest that dealt with TPACK was the cooking one which can be found HERE! On a side note, I have also learned how to link pages into my blog post and how to cite images! I also learned about why technology is so important in todays world. Another quest that I really enjoyed was learning about virtual fieldtrips! I have never even thought about this before this class, but a virtual fieldtrip is the perfect way to learn without leaving the classroom, there is so many advantages to these types of field trips! My favorite was the zoo, you can pick a animal and pull up a live camera feed of that animals exhibit which I find so AWESOME and that can be used in so many different ways!!How about this cute little Panda Cam from the Sandiego ZOO?

I also have learned a great deal about how students can work together and teach themselves things most teachers and people would never believe without proof. Sugata Mitra's TED TALK is so impressive and blows my mind! He talks about his experiment and what the future of learning looks like. Throughout the semester I learned how to use certain tools that can be used inside the classroom as well, such as  Digital Storytelling through the Zimmer Twins. I also created a Tellagami to teach a short mini lesson for the flipped classroom. I really like the idea of a flipped classroom because I like the fact that students come to class prepared and there is more time to work on applying the concepts rather than teaching them.
This semester I also created a classroom webpage that I can use for my future classroom through Weebly which is also a very nice, simple and easy to use free tool! In my technology class I have also created a Twitter to use for educational reasons and have found it so helpful to communicate with fellow educators and find ideas and help when I have my own classroom. Although there are way to many tools to list that I have used or learned about this semester, there are so many good tools out there that are free to use and work well! One thing that I really read into this semester was integrating technology into note taking and taking the traditional task of pencil and paper writing into an online task and I really like this idea. Although I am a very organized, color coated note taker, I know and have helped or seen many students with bad writing or those doodlers who can't stay focused. Taking notes on a device can help a lot and most of them you can still draw on, it makes it easy to collaborate  and easy to give feedback. There are a lot of benefits of  taking notes on a device. There is so much to be learned about technology and I truly don't think that I will ever caught up to the fast changing world but after this class I understand the importance of at least trying to stay up to date. If anything staying up to date for the students because they need to be taught in a digital world they need to know and understand how to be good digital citizens and how to keep their digital footprint as clean as possible. It's not about what we know anymore, it's about knowing how to find the information we need at that point and time . And for my future students sake I promise to do my best in guiding them in the right path and helping them as best I can to be prepared for the untold future that they have in store for them.



We are 'Makers'

The Maker Revolution can completely change the ways of teaching. So many times inside of the classroom teachers teach to the test, straight from the textbook. The world is no longer 'how much do I know' it is 'do I know how to get the information that I need'. The upcoming generation needs to know how to solve problems, not facts that they memorized for the test and then soon after forgot. The maker revolution is about becoming makers or inventors. Arts integration and technology integration both become an important part of teaching. A common idea that describes the maker revolution would be "Project-Based Learning" where the students work collaboratively in groups to solve a certain problem or idea.


Resource

We want students to be creative and have an imagination. We want students to be able to navigate the internet and find good reliable resources. In Project-Based Learning students work in groups rather than sitting for a lecture. This idea could completely change my future classroom in a number of ways. I think using this model for teaching will re-structure the classroom. When using this in my classroom I would use this as a way for students to teach each other. When they work together in groups to create something they will become 'pros' in that area and then they can present their information in a million ways to teach the rest of the class about what they learned.







 

Resources

 

Using this model in my future classroom will help to create a more well rounded group of students. It helps with social skills and team building and also creativity and imagination. There are so many benefits of transforming your classroom they outweigh any cons. Two minds are always better than one and when students work together they can create and learn more than they ever will sitting in a traditional classroom.