New Classroom, New Teacher, Old Technology

I was just hired in as a long-term sub at a local middle school. I’m teaching Language Arts and Science to 6th and 7th graders who have behavioral, academic and emotional issues. It’s proving to be quite the challenge. They had a sub in the position for just under a week so now the students have to adjust to yet another change. It’s certainly not the ideal situation for any of us, but I’m determined to make the best of it.

I just spent the entire weekend planning out my lessons for the week. I realize that no one is expecting me to come in and do a whole lot more than give them busy work, but I just can’t do that. It goes against my grain.

I was given a list of “Things to cover,” but nothing in the way of concrete objectives. I don’t have any idea what these students have learned so far and from what I have seen in the first two days, I’m starting to think I’m going to have to go back to some basics including capitalization and punctuation.

I was disappointed to learn the technology in the classroom consists of one computer and a finicky overhead projector that requires a Popsicle stick shoved into the side to get it to stay on. I brought my laptop in along with a projector in hopes that I could connect to the school’s Wifi and find some interesting Web 2.0 tools to use with the class. I just found out there is no Wifi. I’m determined to find a way to integrate technology into this classroom. These kids are bored out of their minds. They hate school and find everything to be completely irrelevant to their lives. Due to their social and behavioral issues, group work is extremely difficult.

Inspired by Harry Wong, I am going into class tomorrow equipped with procedures and routines. I have to get the classroom under control before I can expect anyone to learn much of anything.
I’ll be keeping my blog up to date on my progress.

Embedding Prezi Presentations and More

I've been trying to teach myself new Web 2.0 tools by watching online tutorials and playing around with the different features of each website. The best part of it is that I have a 10 year old daughter who loves to experiment with me. Last weekend, we went on Prezi.com to make a presentation. We spent a little over an hour playing around with it and came up with a simple presentation. There's certainly so much more that this website is capable of. I see a lot of potential with the classroom. It was certainly much more fun than making a powerpoint. The best way to use Prezi would be to have a big picture idea in mind and then go into the details one thing at a time.

I've embedded her presentation on my blog because I'm still trying to get practice with that. I went to a 2 day technology seminar a couple weeks ago and one of the sessions talked about embedding different things in your blog. There's even a way to upload photos and video to your blog from your phone. I still have a long way to go in getting the hang of all this, but I can say with confidence that I'm so much further along than I was a year ago, 6 months ago and even last week.

Serena's Prezi

hey, do you know me? on Prezi

Google Docs and Spreadsheets and Forms~Oh my!

I’m still in the infant stages of learning about this incredible resource, but I am thoroughly impressed with Google Docs and all it has to offer.  I’ve been using the spreadsheets for collaborating with a group of reunion planners while we try to locate classmates.  There’s no “reply to all” emails filling up my inbox.  When a change is made by one member, it is automatically reflected on the spreadsheet for all of us to see.

I’ve used the documents for collaborating with others in my group from school.  The past two weeks, we’ve have been assigned to write a paper as a group.  This is no easy task, but it is much simpler with Google Docs.  We’ve been able to assign each of us a color so that all of our contributions can be easily seen. 

I can see huge potential with this in the classroom when assigning group projects.  The students can submit all of their contributions on one page.  It’s a win-win.  They get to learn from each other while developing their collaboration skills and I get to grade one paper instead of many.

I am anxious for the opportunity to use Google forms.  I’ve browsed through the templates and see the endless possibilities for my future classroom.  The best part about forms is that all of the responses are put into spreadsheet form so that I can see everyone’s answers on the same page.