Integrating Technology

Integrating technology was important for my unit on Government in the 2nd grade classroom because it helped transform my unit from teaching about the basic information needed to understand the subject matter into making learning about government interactive and keeping the students engaged. Technology helps create the 21st century classroom that teachers and students are both striving for. In my unit technology was able to help students have critical thinking skills and work together in groups to create collaboratation with other classmates. Technology was also used to help students that are on different levels of learning and development to be able to take control of their own learning and navigate themselves through technology in a way that makes sense for them. When integrating technology it is important to realize the needs of students in your classroom and be able to make changes and understand what programs they understand best and which do not benefit their learning. This is why I am glad that I know a variety of technology tools to use in my classroom because with the variety of tools to use I will be able to find ways to connect with all of my students in my classroom through engagement of technology.

Technology is a great way to get students engaged because it is always changing, and the students love being able to do new things in the classroom. Throughout my unit I used a variety of different technology tools which consisted of: ActivInspire, Virtual Field Trip, Glogster, Pixton, and Animoto. These tools have become great resources for me in creating engaging lessons and the more practice I continue to have making them the better the technology integration has become. The technology integration that I did throughout my unit can be found on my Wiki page; a Wiki is also a great tool of technology to use in the classroom because it organizes information and presents facts in a way that is easy for others to understand and navigate through.

Creating the technology to put into my unit was fun for me to do and this is because of the variety of technology and sites I have been exposed to and taught how to do. My favorite thing I created were my ActivInspires, and I was surprised by this because when I first learned how to make an ActivInspire I found them difficult to make; but with the more practice I had I was able to fit them to meet the needs of the lessons and make them engaging for the students and make the slides come to life for the students involved. The biggest challenged I faced with integrating technology into my unit was making sure that my students would have enough time to complete the tasks that were asked of them and that the technology matched the standards that were being addressed in the specific lessons.

Many people that have not experienced using technology before usually stray away from technology because they are unsure of ways to use it in the classroom. Education World gives many different ideas on other ways to integrate technology into the classroom through tools that are assessable to all. Technology is also important for the classroom because it is a way to assess our students and be able to collect data that is useful in the success of all our students. The video in this blog explains how data analysis can be used to tell how students are preforming and this can be done through technology and help create smarter education societies. This is one of the major ways I plan on using technology in the future is to assess my students and be able to inform decisions of where to go in my instruction and make sure students are developing and becoming 21st Century Learners. The aim is to prepare our students and have them receive the best education, and by incorporating technology into our lessons we will be able to do this and reach the education we have been striving for.

PBS Teacher's Blog

There is all sorts of new and exciting ways to use technology in your classroom, and one of the easiest things to do is use the internet and the interesting sites on there. One resourceful website that I have come across is PBS Teachers. PBS Teachers is an interactive website that allows for all types of possibilities. 

One of the great things on PBS Teachers is once you sign up you can be involved in discussions; these discussions can connect you to different resources to talk to like TV/radio stations, PBS, and to any teachers that have signed up on PBS Teachers. The part that is designated for teachers to talk to one another breaks up the conversation based on the subject the teacher is trying to get ideas on. When focusing on a specific unit/topic it is easy to go into these discussions and find what you are looking for; if you were looking for a lesson about government it is easy to go into the social studies section and search around and even be able to find something that includes more technology within the lesson that other teachers have used as well. 

PBS Teachers is also broken down by grade levels to share content and subject information. When you click on the different grades you can tell they are changing because above your information yellow box the writing utensils will change; they go from chalk to crayons to color pencils to drawing pencils to pens. For second grade there are so many different tools available to make sure all students get the best education possible. In second grade they are discussing elections and the importance of voting. Through PBS Teachers there are many ideas on how to bring a lesson about elections into the classroom, including a lesson called If I Were President which includes art skills and thinking and reasoning skills. 

PBS KIDS in the Classroom is another resource; this resource is series that how been show on TV or the Web and they help reinforce ideas and lessons that we continue to teach to our students. Wilson & Ditch help with social studies because they can help describe diversity to the students and open up much bigger conversations within the classroom. By using cartoons in the classroom you can relate to the students with things they actually enjoy and so learning can continue to be exciting and enjoyable. PBS Teachers is a great resource that can really help you in the classroom, and it is always important to be aware of the good resources that are out there. Through PBS Teachers you are able to chat with other teachers, get ideas to teach in your classroom, and open up a whole network of ways to continue to keep your class a fun environment that all students want to be a part of. So what are you waiting for, become a part of PBS Teachers today!

Pixton

Class Elections are coming up soon! We must begin to talk about the importance of having a government within our classroom; as well as local, state, and national governments. The first Pixton comic shows how elections work and who gets to vote. We have learned that citizens are responsible for voting and in our own classroom, every student gets the opportunity to vote for who they think would do the best job. Elections are important to hold in the classroom because we get to find the person in our class that collectively we all think will do a great job at a specific office. Also with voting it is all up to the people in the class to pick their next leader, just like in local, state, and national governments.
Everyone in our class will get the opportunity to run for whatever office of their choosing. The Pixton comic below is what every student will fill out with what office they would like to hold. The students must also explain why they want the specific position and how they will use it to better the classroom. Classroom elections are very important and they will help prepare us for when we vote in local, state, and national elections! 

Formative Assessment in Second Grade

Throughout your years in the classroom, you take many test, many you may think are pointless and are not helping you learn; but then there are those ones that enhance your learning and help you grow as a person. These types of tests are formative assessment. Assessments become formative when the teacher uses the information they receive and take it and adapt it to fit the needs of their students. As teachers to continue educating our students in the best way we can we must understand that there is a different between assessing FOR learning and the assessing OF learning.  Assessing for learning is formative assessment, whereas assessing of learning is summative assessment which is used to measure the level of success at the end of the unit; this is why formative assessment is necessary because it will help create a higher end result because the students will be learning more in all different ways.
There are many different varieties to formative assessment. One interesting idea is called Four Corners, in Four Corners, the students are given the opportunity to walk around the classroom, think by themselves, and also communicate with classmates. It is always a good idea to give the students many different ways to do an assessment, because all of our students learn differently. You can use Four Corners as a game to have students say if they "strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree" and also you can use it as an interactive way to do a multiple choice quiz together as a class and label the corners in your room "A, B, C, D." There are numerous ways to use formative assessment in your classroom and by taking all of these different assessment tools you will be able to reach all of your students; two different formative assessments could be a quiz or a journal and these two assessments both appeal to different types of students. The quiz appeals to the student that is good at test taking skills and a journal helps the student do individual reflection and this will help the student that is good at writing down their thoughts. By having so many different forms of formative assessment, no students will be left without learning.

Formative assessment is the way teachers should all be teaching. It may seem hard to think that you must have continuing testing throughout the day, but that is the only way to truly understand what your students are learning and all these small assessments throughout the day will better prepare you for understanding your class and better prepare your students as learners. It is said by Judith Dodge that "in the rush to cover more, students are actually learning less." Students tend to retain less when the information is not meaningful to them. It is important to continuing ask yourself throughout the day "How is my student evolving as a learner" and to use multiple forms of assessing to get your data because this will give you multiple windows to look at to see the types of ways your individual students learn best and to see how they are evolving as learners.  Some quick ways to gather information in your classroom to enhance learning are included in the Judith Dodge article and some of them are summaries and reflections which have the students stop and think about what they have just learned and be able to explain it, lists/charts/graphic organizers and these will help students note relationships that form between all the information they are processing, visual representations where the students will use both pictures and words to show relationships, and collaborative activities which will give the students the opportunity to talk to their peers and move around the classroom.

Using feedback from our students is necessary because after all having continuous dialouges with our students will help both the teacher and the students. It is important to teach through your students' eyes and just because the material my seem easy to you as a teacher, it does not mean all your students are grasping the information being presented to the them. Many of these things happen in a classroom daily, it is just our jobs as educators to make sure we walk around the classroom and listen to what our students are doing and making sure they are on the right task. It is also important in formative assessment to make sure we are not grading our students but giving them feedback and helping them further the information they know and helping them gain the information they do not know.