Podcasting!

Hello everyone!
As part of my graduate course, I am required to create a podcast, highlighting the demographic profile of my students' use and experience with technology. This proved to be very challenging, as my school's technology refused to mesh with the podcasting technology, hence I did not get to use my students' recordings. That being said, it was definitely a learning process this week. Please click on the link below to listen to my analysis of technology's impact on my third grade class.

http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/9030 

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Post the following to your blog by Wednesday:

• Your reaction to the website: The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills website offers some informative, eye-opening material. I found some information startling, while still having doubts about the actual impact the partnership holds.  Let me explain.

 

Information on the site that surprised you or helped you develop a new understanding of the issues surrounding 21st-century skills

First off, I was surprised particularly by the twenty-first century skills that the Partnership (2004) highlights: global awareness, financial, economic, and business literacy, and civic literacy. While I know that global awareness is becoming a more common expectation in classrooms, I had not thought of the other literacy components as being deemed twenty-first century skills. Being a third grade teacher, I am not sure how to incorporate business, economic, and financial literacy into my curriculum, short of learning how to count money correctly. Reading about these skills made me reflect on how to incorporate these skills at an appropriate level that will be meaningful to students.

Information or opinions on the site that you disagree with along with an explanation of why you disagree

Although the Partnership (2004) is a website that has over eight thousand members, and provides some great videos that may help a teacher prepare to teach in the twenty-first century, many of the resources listed are dated back to a few years ago! In trying to find one resource available in the state of Wisconsin, the most recent one occurred in 2009! I found it ironic that the site claims to be a leader in advocating for twenty-first century student readiness, yet the resources themselves are dated. How can teachers attend workshops to learn more about this program when the workshops no longer exist?

The implications for your students and for you as a contemporary educator

Overall, the site does imply that teaching a student twenty-first century skills requires more than just putting him/her on a computer. To really prepare students for the adult workforce, I need to include skills like problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration into all aspects of my curriculum: instruction and assessment.

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills. (2004). Retrieved from: http://www.p21.org/index.php . 

            Washington, D.C.

Blogging in the Classroom

By Wednesday, post an idea for how you might use a blog in your classroom.
           One of my goals for this class is to implement some of the latest technologies into my third grade classroom effectively. As I learn the ropes of using a blog, I reflected on how I could successfully use blogging within my room. Currently my students are really starting to use the writing process: prewriting, rough draft, revising, editing, and finally, publishing. At one point in the writing process they need to hold a peer writing conference, in which one person reads and the other gives at least one positive comment and one revising suggestion about the written piece. This proves very challenging for students, as they do not always remember what their partner read and/or they do not give a very meaningful suggestion.

            I would like to use blogging as an outlet for students to work through the writing process and eventually showcase their published work. Specifically, I would like to form small groups of three or four students to act as a team in revising each person’s work. Each child would submit his/her rough draft, and the other members of the team would come up with at least one compliment and one revising suggestion. After the child has made the necessary revisions, he/she could post the published piece.

            As Richardson (2010) points out, many students do not realize, especially elementary age ones, how to properly post to a blog, so initially I would post my own ‘rough draft’ for all students to reflect on and help revise. I would also show examples of various levels of meaningful, helpful posts, so that students know exactly what is expected of them when giving feedback.  

            In using a blog to help teach students about the writing process, students are becoming more involved in each other’s writing. By posting to a blog, students need to work hard to come up with meaningful compliments and feedback. Toffler (1980) argues that education is becoming more collaboration-driven as society moves through this technological age, which is what the purpose of this blog would be: working together to create published written work. This also gives me the chance to really monitor the students’ writing progress and ability to give constructive feedback.  I could also make the blog accessible to parents, so that they have a chance to see their own child’s progress. Overall, it seems that blogs provide an innovative way for students to work together and for parents to stay connected with school.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Toffler, A. (1980). The third wave. New York: Bantam Books.

Jumping in Head First!

Hello, everybody!

I am currently a third grade teacher in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. I have recently begun a graduate school course, in which I will learn about the impact various technologies have on school, work, and society. Because of this, I have started a blog in the hopes of better understanding how to use some of the most up-and-coming tools of the twenty-first century.

As an educator, I 'wade in the shallow waters' of technology, using many of the reliable forms that have been around for awhile, such as Power Point and word processing programs. Throughout this course, I hope to be given new technology tools to use, along with the confidence, to 'jump in head first,' within my curriculum and classroom.

I welcome any advice, strategies, tips others have to offer and I am excited for the weeks ahead!