EDO525: Final Blog-Making Strategies Work

It's been almost 20 years since I've been in college full time, in the school of education. Even when I was in school, my major was English teaching, so although I had education courses, the focus of my studies was literature, and that is where I generally excelled. Honestly, the education courses I had were pretty meaningless to me. Afterall, I had yet to experience the real classroom environment so studying various theories and practices was like learning to build a house without driving a nail. Hence, I found the strategies we learned in 525 to be extremely helpful. Even though I've incorporated all of these strategies at one time or another, I don't recall ever really learning them or having them so nicely laid out for me like the textbook did. As I peruse over the strategies, I find that I'm strong in many of them but very weak in others.

My strengths tend to be giving recognition, incorporating nonlinguistic learning, providing plenty of practice with little homework, and generating hypotheses. In addition, I think I provide many opportunities for cooperative learning but not necessarily by creating small groups. Instead, as students work, I often allow them to talk to each other and help each other out. I find that this form of cooperative learning not only assists students who have difficulties, but also strengthens the skills of my more accelerated learners.

As I glance at the long list of strategies and technologies, however, I can see several areas where I could use improvement. I always set objectives for my lessons but as I've pointed out elsewhere, I rarely actually state those objectives to the students, nor do I provide cues and questions to direct their learning. I guess in the past I've assumed that the best way to educated my students is for them to follow the lesson, allowing them to have their "ah-ha" moment at the end. After reading the textbook, however, I can see that I might have more success if I tell them where we're going first. Doing so will still give them the "ah-ha" moment while making it clearer the direction we're headed in the first place. In addition, although many of my projects include rubrics, I think I need to provide more feedback and, in general, more communication. I have to admit, like many teachers, I get behind on my grading and so the turnover between presentation and feedback is too long. Incorporating various technologies would most likely help this. Finally, now that I'm actually taking classes in my current field and getting the training I need, I am getting my hands on many, many new resources that I can take right back to my classroom. Thus, this fall I will have a variety of applications that my students will be able to use at home. When I introduce and talk about these applications, however, I will have to be sure to include the strategy of identifying similarities and differences. Prior, I rarely compared and contrasted. Instead, I would simply introduce each subject as something new.

Being the technology teacher, I have all the technologies necessary to incorporate into my strategies and really no excuse not to. To communicate objectives to my students I can do everything from creating Powerpoint shows to laying out the objectives in a Word document. In addition, my District is fortunate enough to have Kid and Inspiration, which I have very rarely used in the past but which I will find extremely valuable now for a variety of strategies, including brainstorming and communicating objectives and providing cues and questions. In addition, I will use Kidspiration as a group to look at the similarities and differences between different applications. For example, in the past my students have only used MS Word for all word processing, but this fall I plan to create Google accounts for my older students. Therefore, they will now have the option of using two word processing applications. I plan on showing them even more, such as Thinkfree and Etherpad which provides actual real time group collaboration. Kidspiration will be an excellent tool for comparing and contrasting these various word processing applications. In terms of communicating more with the students, I am planning on exploring RCampus in more depth. This site provides not only rubric-generating resources but also a potential way for students to log in and see classroom progress, instead of waiting for me to hand something back to them. In addition, I'd love to find the time to try a Wiki for one of my classes. Last year, I was out for a couple of weeks for back surgery and so I created a Google Presentation and logged in during my class and conducted the presentation. My students absolutely loved it and were undoubtedly more tuned in than they would have been had I simply shown them the Powerpoint at school on the projector. To them, it was playtime, even though they were learning a great deal. I think they would find the same enjoyment if I created a Wiki. Since I'm the librarian, I could create a book club. This would be another way of communicating with my students on a regular basis. Another technology I plan on using this fall is our new Pixie Suite. This application allows the users to create everything from slideshows to podcasts and websites. This would be yet another great way for students to communicate to their families all the things we're doing in class. In addition, publishing their work would be a great way to provide recognition and feedback.

I'm very excited about all the changes I'll be making this fall. I have my work cut out for me, but investing the time is sure to produce results I had never dreamed of before and provide a much clearer direction for my curriculum.