Personal Learning Reflection

One of the biggest things I have learned this semester is that the generation I teach, and will be teaching for years to come, is continually changing in their learning habits. It takes more than just a lecture to engage a student in the 21st century and it also takes more than that for me, as a high school teacher, to stay interested in teaching my subject matter. As my graduate course CEP 810 culminates, I wish to reflect on what I learned that will help me to incorporate “more” into my lessons.

During the sessions, I have discovered many effective teaching strategies that are being employed in school districts around the world. The focus of these strategies is how to successfully integrate technology into lessons. A memorable video from Edutopia called “A Commitment to High Tech Education”, featured many classes that used technology and lessons daily, such as clickers, GPS, heart-rate monitors, laptops, etc. What also stood out from this school was that sports teams, clubs and classes intertwined their lessons together. Not only does this allow students to collaboratively use the tools that they learn best with, but they are also able to learn about information in a way that interests them. Other helpful aspects of our course that demonstrated effective teaching strategies were our SIG projects, the MACUL network, and our Angel discussion board. My classmates and I discussed lesson plans, tips, and tricks to new technology that are easily incorporated in any classroom. Many of these include using videos, cell phones, wikis, blogs, and, of course, cloud computing in classes, whether in school or at home.

As mentioned in my Personal Growth Plan, before this class I thought about classroom technology as interactive white boards, graphing calculators, clickers, online textbooks and other electronic devices. However, when reflecting on the strategies mentioned above (videos/screen casting, wikis, blogs, cloud computing), the Internet played a major role in many of them. They are not necessarily a piece of equipment. The greatest thing about teachers and students using the World Wide Web for technology incorporation is that it is easily accessible and mostly free. Most students have access to the Internet at home but also have the ability to use it at school before school, during lunch, or after school. The Internet can save a lot of money for schools that can purchase technology tools but can also enable lower-budget schools to use certain online technologies at little or no cost.

During my course, I have read articles, browsed websites, and watched many videos and tutorials to help me create assignments demonstrate technology that can be used in my own classroom. I have a few that I am particularly proud of: my blog, my RSS page, SIG presentation, and my Personal Technology Plan. I plan on turning my blog into a Math blog for my classes and allow students to solve problems on, discuss assignments, and ask questions. My RSS page is something new to me and it is very cool to have a collection of educational (and other) blogs and sites that are continuously updating that I can browse for advice and ideas. I had a great experience presenting video lessons with my group in our SIG project. We worked well together and I am proud of what we accomplished. I feel 100% more comfortable with utilizing videos in lessons, projects, for at-home use, screen casting, etc. Lastly, I was very excited to learn about the presentation application Prezi that I created my Personal Technology Plan with. To me, it is the new Powerpoint with engaging features that allowed me to properly reflect on my plan for technology integration in my classroom.

When re-reading my Personal Growth Plan from the beginning of the course, the last sentence proved to be of worth, because I did indeed learn a wealth of knowledge since this assignment and started thinking of ways to incorporate these ideas in my classes. I think at the time of my Personal Growth Plan creation, I had the idea that I would be able to incorporate technology immediately in my classroom as the course progressed. However, by taking two online courses, working full-time, and coaching, I have not had the time needed to successfully include technology everywhere I want to. I think my previous goals mentioned in my plan and above in my reflection are still valid and I intend to meet them. I will bookmark all websites I learned about to my Diigo account and save all my files for future use.

Personal Technology Plan

Learning Styles

When viewing the LDPride website and reading the Occasional Paper, Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, I have developed an understanding for the different types of learning styles. I have reflected on these and thought back to when I was in high school and college to determine which learning experiences I remember the most and what teaching strategies were present for these experiences. According to the website mentioned, I believe that I am first and foremost a visual learner. I liked sitting in the front of the class, taking notes, and doing problems that had a picture or diagram to go with it. Even better would be to do something hands-on with manipulatives, computers, or experiments, which would also bring up the fact that I consider myself also somewhat of a kinesthetic learner. Although I enjoy learning through doing, I do not usually get restless when sitting or distracted easily. According to Table 6 in the Occasional Paper mentioned, I believe I was a dependent, participant, and competitive learner in high school because I was more of a math inclined and logical person. I liked learning the steps from notes and doing practice problems to learn the material. However, when I attended college, I felt my learning style shift more toward independent, collaborative, and participant, which I think most professors strive for their classroom environment. I have never been a reading, writing, open-ended discussing type of learner and verbal learning was a struggle for me.

As one can see, I have had experiences with different types of learning throughout my life and have even matured in my ability to learn in ways I had not been able to in the past. I think the same is true for my students. Many of them have the capability to learn in more than one way and have more than one learning style. With this in mind, hopefully I can reach each student by mixing up my teaching strategies frequently to embrace as many learning styles as possible in a given unit of instruction. As the Occasional Paper explained, “faculty should begin by being self-reflective about their pedagogical goals and strengths in teaching.” I will continue to do what works, learn about different teaching strategies, try them out gradually, and reflect on these experiences. My hope is to expand many of my students learning capabilities, just as it was for me in my transition from high school learning to college learning.

Creative Commons

Photo Attribution:

Original Image: "Venice Canals"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55089313@N02/5109372528/

By:  Lindsay Sanders

Released under Attribution Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Photo Attribution:


Original Image: "Happy Pi Day (to the 69th digit)!"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/3355106480/
By:  Mykl Roventine


Released under Attribution Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Images can make all the difference in your lessons. To visual learners, as discussed in the reading Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, pictures, charts, images, clipart, etc. are engaging in lessons. These students will have a visual image to draw back on when remembering a concept taught in my class. I try to add clipart to my powerpoint notes and to accompany word problems in hopes that students will recollect the problem solving process for a particular question on future assessments. What I will be sure to do in the future is give photo attribution and search for my photos on Flickr or Creative Commons websites.

Group 1 SIG Proposal

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=11xDugF-wbDbHQjLeI2RHj8LyStj7FdinEnAGrAf38Fo

Atomic Learning Internet Security Tutorials

Computer Clean Up and Speed Up

There are several programs available to computer users that will clean up disk space on your hard drive. These programs feature ways to delete unwanted programs you have downloaded, duplicate programs, demo programs, older versions of programs, old files, and temporary files. There were a few new processes of computer clean up that I learned about while viewing the tutorials at Atomic Learning. One thing is called compression of old files. This feature allows you to minimize the amount of space these files take up but does not delete them from your computer. You can access this through “Disk Cleanup” in the system tools folder through accessories. I also learned about something I didn’t know existed, a way to clean up your computer by using an application from the internet called “Windows CleanUp!” It even makes a toilet flushing noise when you use this program. When you clean up space on your computer, this will allow your system to run more smoothly and at a faster rate.

Firewalls

This was an extensive section of information that I did not have much prior knowledge on. I have always known that you need firewall protection on your computer to protect it from viruses, but did not understand that there were different types of firewall, what exactly firewall does (or doesn’t do) for your computer, or the different free firewall programs available for users to install. One thing that I learned that I want to share with you is that it will be beneficial for you to have both a hardware and software firewall system on your computer because they each do different things to protect your computer from dangers of being connected to the internet. The hardware is usually part of your internet router and can hide your computer from hackers, but will not stop you from receiving/spreading viruses, spam, pop-ups, and spyware. This is when the software firewall comes into play. It will notify you when these threats occur on your computer and gives you the ability to protect your computer from them. What surprised me is that there are (at least) two free firewall programs that you can download that will protect your computer’s vulnerability from internet threats. These programs are Zone Alarm and Shields Up. Also, if you have a PC, you should have a Windows firewall program already on your computer that you can use to set your firewall settings at a high level of protection.

File Backup Options

These were the tutorials that caught my attention the most for this assignment and were the most beneficial to me personally. If you read my previous blog posting, you noticed my hard drive crashed and my old computer basically won’t turn on anymore. I was in the market for a new computer before this happened, but had I known about file backup, I might have been able to recover the files I had on my old computer and held out on buying a new one for a little longer. According to the Atomic Learning tutorials, there are many file backup options in existence. Some charge a fee for using their services (like Genie Backup Manager), some are free (like Karen’s Replicator and Folder Share), and there is also one on your computer in the system tools folder of accessories. Some of these back up your documents to an external hard drive (like a usb flash drive, big usb hard drive, laptop size hard drive, blank CDs), which you must purchase separately. For my work documents, I back up my files on our network periodically as well as on a usb flash drive. I also have some of my older documents from my old computer on this flash drive. With other backup programs, you can simply back up your files online, which I was excited to learn about. I will be looking into using one of the programs the tutorial recommended; media max, yahoo, gmail, 4shared, allmydata.

Wireless

This last tutorial I viewed discussed wireless connection for computers. I found this tutorial a little outdated, yet it provided me with some information that I felt increased my awareness of internet security. Of course, when you want to have a wireless internet connection in your house, you will need cable internet and a wireless router. Also, if you have an older desktop or laptop without wireless built in, you will need a wireless usb adapter. The prices are pretty similar now to what the tutorial claimed routers, such as Linksys and Netgear, were (about $60-$150), depending if they come with firewall built in. The important information discussed in the tutorial about configuring and securing your wireless connection is something I will make sure I do every time I move. I will also share this information with friends who also use wireless internet. It is very important to change your SSID name to something you will remember, but does not identify you. Also, the security option is essential to remaining protected from outsiders. You will want to choose the WPA-PSK protected access and create a good password. This way, you can prevent just anyone from accessing your internet for free and possibly damaging your network. I was surprised to learn that some people are known to drive around looking for unsecure wireless connections in neighborhoods and connecting to them from their cars. When living in an apartment complex it is especially important to keep your wireless network secure from outsiders, since you have so many neighbors close enough to have that access.

RSS Feed

After having my computer crash, I finally got my new laptop! I am able to update you on my latest obsession of my CEP 810 course... RSS! Let me tell you what an RSS is. It is an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication" and is basically a personal website that contains your favorite blogs and updates to your favorite websites. It is a quick way to see new items of interest online without wasting time looking through all of your favorite websites for updates, when many won't have any. In the past 6 months or so, I have noticed a little orange RSS button on many websites and I have had no clue what that button was for. Now I know and I enjoyed my time collecting feeds from my favorite sites to put on my RSS reader, Netvibes. Below are some images (created using Jing) of my various feeds including educational blogs and websites, world news, sports updates, and entertainment highlights.

In my educational tab above, I included the four required feeds: Technology and Learning, NPR Topics: Education, Weblogg-ed, and Literacy Education Updates. These sites are continuously updating posts and articles on average once or twice a week. NPR tends to have news articles about the politics of education, Tech and Learning displays new technology products that are available, Weblogg-ed is a blog discussing technology in education, and the Literacy Education blog for English language arts teachers. Of these, the NPR feed was of most interest to me because I learned of many interesting current issues in the teaching world, including bullying, grading systems, and the controversy over educational reform. I plan to continue to view this feed and many others mentioned to help better inform myself on the profession of teaching and learn of new free technology features that I am able to use in my classroom.

I also added my own feeds, shown above, as I explored websites with RSS capabilities. These include the EduTech Today Newsletter, Sudoku puzzles, the weather, a calculator, my teacher calendar from Brookwood High School, Wild About Math, ISTE Connects (this also had a blog about tips for new teacher bloggers!), Media Infusion, Rhyme Rhyme Results (songs about math), and Teacher Tube. One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. As you can see below, I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts, he updates about once a week, and I plan on trying out some of the new resources and free technology I've discovered! (I mentioned some of these on our MACUL discussion post.) I am already using Google Docs, when working on lessons from home, instead of emailing the documents. I have also looked into GeoGebra for my notes and assessments. To continue this in my CEP class, I will look into Google Sketchup and CamStudio for my SIG project.

One of the blogs that I subscribed to on my RSS is an educational math blog called "Mathematics and Multimedia" by Guillermo Bautista that focuses on school mathematics. His post entitled "Free Tools Every Math Blogger Should Learn" is what hooked me to subscribe to his blog. It contained tools such as WordPress, GOOGLE DOCS!!, Scribd, GeoGebra, Google Sketchup, CamStudio, and many others. I commented on this post on how much I appreciate that he created this collection for new math bloggers, such as myself. I continue to observe his posts and try out some of the new resources I've discovered!

Being a concerned citizen, I continuously check up on the local, national, and world news via the internet. It was nice being able to contain all my favorite sites on my Netvibes page, such as 11Alive (Atlanta TV news), AJC (Atlanta newspaper), Click on Detroit (to keep up news in my hometown area), CNN, E! Online (celebrity news), Food Network (daily recipes), 955 the beat (Atlanta radio station), and Delta and Airtran news.

I also am a sports fan and enjoyed seeing all the highlights from ESPN and BigTen football games, including MSU! I coach golf at my high school, so the PGA feed keeps me up to date on who is wining the Ryder Cup and the mini golf game keeps me entertained.

Getting Things Done (GTD)

I have been a “list” person since I was young. I still use a paper and pencil to write out my to-do list, that way I don’t stress out to remember the things I need to complete. I also have a daily planner that I write in for course planning at work as well as for personal use. I recently got a smart phone (Blackberry Storm), and I started utilizing the calendar feature to add reminders for my events. As for my “inbox”, I am going to set up an actual tray in my classroom and one at my apartment for papers that need my attention. Along with this new addition to my GTD process, I will use an application on my phone for an electronic to-do list. This way, I won’t have random pieces of paper with listed to-do items, but can group them with my calendar events on my cell phone, also known as “collecting”. A downside of this system for me is that I cannot have my phone out during the school day. This is the primary reason I use the pencil and paper format, it is easily accessible and appropriate at work.

When thinking of the other elements in the workflow process, I believe that prioritization and organization are strengths of mine. Therefore, deciding which tasks to take on first with my new system should still be adequate. I tend to do the quick, “2 minute” tasks as they come to my attention, yet procrastinate more on projects that take much longer to complete. I am confident that my electronic task reminder, to-do list, and inbox will keep me in line during the next month of this course. I’m hoping to continue this process afterward, but not sure if I’m going to remember to go through all 5 steps for every task and project. I will, however, need to constantly review what tasks and projects I have and have not completed.

Social Networking

The only social network I belonged to before entering CEP 810 was facebook. I joined the site in 2005, when it was first becoming big and you had to have a college or university e-mail address in order to join. It has only served as a personal network for me, linking up with old friends from high school, new friends from various places, and now even my mom has an account. I use it mainly as a source to manage my digital pictures, keep up on what my friends are doing (also known as “facebook stalking”), and sometimes update my status. I have noticed over the past year or so that many businesses, musicians, celebrities, organizations, etc. have facebook pages. So, the website is no longer just for stalking your friends, it is a useful networking tool where people can learn of upcoming events, share ideas, form or join groups, and communicate easily with others.

After learning about the positive attributes of social networking for professional reasons, I want to be able to expand mine to include sites other than facebook. I joined the professional networks LinkedIn and Classroom 2.0, in hopes that I connect with other teachers, both new and experienced, to learn how they use technology in their classrooms. I hope to somehow integrate a social network, along with many of the other productivity tools I have recently learned of, in my classroom.

The Differences Between Traditional Websites & Blogs

After exploring Blogger and other Blog websites, I can see many differences between these websites and traditional websites. The biggest of these would be the interaction and personalization of the author and other readers. On traditional web pages, readers will see information, pictures, etc., but usually do not have the option to comment, tag, or share. There are also many different websites to create blogs through Blogger, Edublog, etc. As a teacher, blogging can enhance my communication and collaboration with my students and their parents, where my traditional teacher web page just illustrates basic information.

Hi, I'm Ms. Sanders.

I teach 9th and 10th grade math.