Ed. Tweeters

I started following some educational tweeters and bloggers.
Here is one link from Twitter that I  found really interesting  on Educational Leadership      
http://t.co/tyymEXky. It was called:
Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do. 

This is a great list! Super helpful for reflecting on personal strengths & weaknesses, & finding areas for improvement.

Found this yesterday. The sequential date didn't even dawn on me! Had fun with this lesson as morning work!

Today is 10-11-12. Have your students calculate the next dates that will also be sequential numbers.

I also added a blogger that I really like that I found on pinterest in my google reader. Her blog is

 3rd Grade Thoughts
http://www.3rdgradethoughts.com/

One of my favorite things she does is take pictures of her anchor charts and post them on her blog. What a great way to help parents see what learning is happening in the classroom! I am so gonna start doing this.

 

10 Tips for PLN Educators Reflections

Dr .Mark Wagner wrote "Personal Learning Networks for Educators: 10 Tips". I like that this article was kept simple, but had links to further pursue if interested. It was broken up nicely and made some great points. The first 4 tips fell under the category of:

Learning to Network and Networking to Learn

 

Great title.
 

1. Connect

2. Contribute
3. Converse
4. Request

I feel like we do a great job of this at our weekly PLN, just not on a global level.

Next was:

Networking Tools and Anecdotes

 

This area seems to be being taken care of through Elite trainings.
 

5. Blog 
6. Tweet
7. Join Classroom 2.0 
8. Use Google+

 And finally 

Final Thoughts

9. Be Patient 
10. Be Authentic

I think this is a great article to get started networking. I honestly wish I had more time to dedicate to this.  I am fortunate to not feel isolated in my classroom (as Dr. Wagner says some educators feel) and to have an abundance of support.
I can see how it can keep me connected to the larger learning community and be a benefit to my education and therefore my students. Dr. Wagner says  "All educators (and learners) can benefit from extending their own personal learning network online – beyond the walls of their schools, the boundaries of their districts, and the limits of their experience."  and I agree. Doing more networking and connecting to the global learning community is something I definitely want to further pursue once I get my first year back teaching under my belt. I feel a summer project coming on! I do feel it is something for more experienced educators. I feel like I am just learning the ropes of my curriculum. I need to focus on it and my students now. I am enjoying the benefits of other's experience and wisdom right now and hope to be on the contributing end soon!

diigo group reflection

I joined a diigo group called EdTech and found some cool resources. I used one during a lesson on ecosystems last week. It was called Animals and Plants: Biomes of the World. My favorite part of was finding the website it came from called "the wildclassroom.com". It's main title is The Wild Classroom: Biology Videos and Podcasting via Ecogeeks. Great site!

 The video showed an Oahu tree snail in its environment on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. All the remaining species of this snail are threatened with extinction in our lifetime.  My students loved this video and we had a great lesson on ecosystems as well as food chains and ecology.

This is such a great time to be teaching because there is an infinite amount of resources right at our finger tips. I can find current and meaningful lessons to work with any lesson I am presenting! In seconds! I'm not sure if the diigo group necessarily helped, I may have found this site by simply googling biomes or ecosystems, but no matter how I got there, we rocked that lesson!

I watched the video on technology and learning presented by David Jones and David Warlick to complete my Elite 2 tic tac toe. They gave a virtual tech forum on the impact of of social media in schools. Their focus was "Embracing and Responding to this Powerful, Disruptive Technology". The first point they made was social media should be about learning, not students or even teaching. We need to present ourselves as learners in front of our students through our use of technology and social media.

Where we are today, we need to use technology to do our job in education. We need to "keep up in a time of rapid change". Our curriculums need to have digital abundant content in order for our students to be learning in a contemporary informational environment. I like the analogy Mr. Warlick used in comparing books and technology. He said not teaching with technology today would be like our teachers not using books as we were learning. It is that important.

As a kind of "old school" teacher, having graduated just when the internet was developing, I like how Mr. Jakes talked about valuing the skill, not the technology. If I think a skill is important to my students, I need to present it in digital context. Then I extend that skill to a higher level with social collaboration. My students benefit and work towards becoming more skilled in environment they will be graduated in.

This contemporary education environment is presented in a "this is where we are at, this is where we need to go" context. We need to "go together" on this. Time and money need to be dedicated to move our students to where they need to be. I have seen evidence of the this all around me in Lindbergh. Great strides are being taken to be sure we are giving our students the best tools they will need to be successful.

Mr. Jakes and Mr. Warlick concluded their discussion by saying we are successful as educators when not only the technology becomes invisible, but the walls, the bell schedule, and the boundaries that divide teachers and students become invisible. We have succeeded when our educational curriculums are defined by their lack of limits. I love this take on technology and its limitless capabilities. I feel we have only scratched the surface with how far we can take learning if we have the tools to take us there.