Making Connections

In our century, I personally believe, it is no longer an option to be connected; in order to continue learning, we have to stay connected with the most up to date information out there. The quote to the left is extrememly important to me. I think we need to understand that it may not be about the device at hand, but how we are using it. Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. are all places that we can choose to use as a resources to better our knowledge and connect to people who can help with that. There are many ways to start you Personal Learning Network (PLN) and it excites me that there are so many ways we can do this now!




I think there are many ways I am connected, but I would love to become more professionally involved with networks. Iowa State has given me many opportunities, one being: Move For Thought. This is a online learing community that teachers can post many different integrated PE lessons and ideas. That is one way I am connected. I would love to become more connected professionally through Twitter and other proffesional networks. By doing this, I believe I will become a better teacher and learner.

On Sunday, February 23, I was able to participate in an online interview with a man from OSU. He answered many questions, but focused on:  

What are the benefits of using technology/social media as a PLN to improve their practice and those of their students?

I was able to learn so much from him and understand the importance of PLNs for me and my future students. My favorite quote from him was "making personal connections is the most important." He explains this by saying that they are the people that can help you be better at your job, which in the end makes your students do better. 

One very important piece of information I learned from Toby was that connected educator is not the right phrase to use because we ARE all connected already. Toby emphasized the importance that connections are ways that help YOU be a better YOU: they are personal and interactive. The connections we make with people are when we share information that helps us relate on different levels of understandings that will help us be successful. 

There were also many ways that Toby said he benefitted from PLNs. 

http://technorati.com/social-media/article/twitter-fakes-tweets-to-promote-twitter/

Twitter is one of the main resources Toby talked about that was beneficial. I believe it is a greeat way to explain the importance of using social media to help us make connections and learn. Twitter allows us to follow educators and any people that will help us be successful. Toby explain that once he was seeing tweets about a project he was doing; he followed the hashtag and then was able to learn and benefit from the material! This is what it is all about! Making connections that benefit us. 

A piece of advise from Toby and I: Make personal connections NOW! The sooner you start connecting with people, the more you can learn and benefit from it. 

One way that I am excited to start making connections is through conferences like EdCamp Iowa! There are many ways to connect with others and start to learn about ways that can benefit you and your students. Start with something small and local like this, and then move forward, creating more connections and learning.

Another topic we talked about was the importance of your students making connections. One way to have them do this is by live blogging in the classroom. How fun would it be to have your students post what you were doing in class to keep family up to date. It would also beneficial for students to look back and reflect, go for help, or if they were ill to get the information. Some other ways are to have them set up a classroom Twitter account, classroom Facebook account, or classroom Google+. Students can connect with their peers and even other proffesionals outside of their classroom, while the teacher is monitoring it.

What about students who cannot access technology (internet) at home?

We call this the DIGITAL DIVIDE. When this happens, we have to work with students the best that we can and be proactive. If you think there are students who will not have access, think of ways they can be involved. For example, Toby uses Google Voice to text his students prompts or reminders. Most students now have text enabled phones, which allow us to connect with them. He also gave other applications that allow us to do this, like: Remind 101 and Celly. The best we can do is accomodate for whatever needs our students have.

http://1toweb.org/blog/

Go out and start connecting!! 

ISTE: Technology Standards for Teachers and Students

https://blogs.ubc.ca/cwchapman/2014/01/18/iste-standards-self-reflection/

ISTE, also known as International Society for Technology in Education, is where the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) that should be implemented in your classrooms can be found in detail.

https://www.iste.org/

When I first began looking at the teacher and students ISTE standards, I took an assessment on Atomic Learning to see how much I knew about the standards. Surprisingly I did pretty well (after only reading over the standards online). The teachers' standards where what the assessment was mostly over. The main ideas of the ISTE standards for teachers are listed on the image to the left. When I took the assessment, I seemed to know most about (100% on) Standard 2 (Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessment) and Standard 4 (Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility). Sadly, I need to work on Standard 3 (only 50% correct) which is Model Digital-Age Work and Learning. When looking at the questions I got wrong, I noticed that a lot of them were when I had to pick multiple answers. This was hard because they all seemes right. I also struggled with the modeling questions because the answers were related to tools that could help the classroom or encourage students to use the tools in the classroom. This is the area that I need to focus on getting more knowledgeable in. 

http://nets-implementation.iste.wikispaces.net/                                                     

To the right is an image of the main ideas for the NETS for students. If you look at these and then the NETS for teachers, there are many similarities and differences. The first one is about creativity and innovation. The teachers standard talks about how students can meet this and the students standard shows the importance of how they can represent they have met this standard. Digital citizenship is another direct relationship. It is the same for teachers and students, but the students standard show how they can represent digital citizenship. There are many other similarities within the standards and how they relate, but lets talk about the differences. The main difference people see is that there is 6 standards for studentsand 5 for teachers. The reason there is 6 for students is because students need to be able to learn to USE the technology and understand different concepts. Teachers should already know how to use them, so they should be teaching the students these things.

When you look at the standards, I think that the expectations are just like state standards that are set up, just for technology. To me, these expectations are achievable and important. Teachers need to understand the importance of teaching technology and how students can use it to better their learning. Although, if we want them to be able to use it to better there learning, we have to teach them things like digital citizenship and operations so they can be responsible with it. These are expectations that I think any parent or teacher should hold for themselves if they are allowing students to use technology in a classroom or at home.

As you can see, there is a lot to learn about ISTE standards. I have only talked about them briefly. If you are a preservice teacher like myself, I would highly reccomend getting on Atomic Learning. It has many activites that can help you understand the standards. I would also make sure you do research on them, read them thourougly, and go through each one with someone else. This will help you talk them through and have a much deeper understanding of them. Laslty, I would try to come up with ways that you could potentially meet and use the standards in your room. This will help you see the importance and enrichment of the standards.

http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/2011/03/iste-board-of-directors-let-your-choice.html

Harris & Hofer

Judi Harris and Mark Hofer are two researchers who have focused on prefessional development for educators in technology integration. Haris & Hofer then came up with 5 steps to follow when planning a lesson:

1. Determine Lesson Purpose

2. Make Pedagogical Decisions

3. Select Acticity Types

4. Select the Appropriate Assessment

5. Choose the right tool(s)

There are many ways to "plan" a lesson out there and this is one of them. Do I think it is the best one? Well, to be honest, yes and no. I think it is a great lesson planning tool for technology integration and also if you are a TPACK user. If you do not have the option to have technology integrated, then this may not be your niche. I think that it is extremely important to decide on the lesson purpose first. Before deciding what you will do, you have to know what you want your students to understand. Once you figure that out, you are on to step two. There are 8 pedagogical questions that Haris & Hofer want you to answer for yourself to help mark the parameters of your lesson. I do think that these questions are extremely important. As a teacher, I believe that you should go through these questions, deciding time, prior knowledge, and structure. Finally, after you set your parameters, you can decide the activity types. To be honest, I probably would already know the activities I wanted to do when I was answering the questions for step 2, but now you can say how they will show they have met the purpose of the lesson. Lastly comes picking the assessment and the integrating technology. I think that it is extrememly important to integrate the technology last. This allows teachers to focus on what they want students to learn and then incorporate technology so that it can help benefit your lesson. The only reason I believe it would not be beneficial to plan the tool last would be that you do not know if it will have any use to your class. If you are able to  know what tool you are using before, you may be able to pick something that will support your lesson better. Whether you integrate your technology last or in the middle, a great way to see if it is benefitting your students is to ask yourself these questions:

http://tech4urcontent.edublogs.org/2010/08/27/thought-process-for-integrating-technology-into-the-classroom/

I like to use these questions when thinking about the importance of the technology in my classroom. Finally, when thinking of Harris and Hofers steps, no teacher comes to my mind. I have not witnessed someone planning like this, but I would love to see it in action. I think being able to see it in action would help me understand it more and decide if I wanted to use it in my future classroom. 

I will leave you with this to ponder... If you were or are an educator, do you think it is important to use Harris and Hofers five steps for lesson planning?