Technology - For What?

As a part of my first masters programs I thought and wrote a lot about the appropriate use of technology in education.  We were beginning year two as a Classrooms For the Future (CFF) school, and it seemed like many people were using technology for the sake of using technology, instead of thinking a lot about how technology allows our kids to have a completely different experience (where warranted) than student could only a few years prior.

Things have gotten better since then, which is likely a combination of an improvement in the tools (software and hardware) that are available to students to use, and a relaxation of our administrators attitudes toward technology use in the classroom.  Despite the improvement, I don't think that one has to look too hard to find examples where teachers think they're offering their students a transformative experience because they're using an online tool, but in reality the change is offering no real improvement in the learning or the experience of the students.

The following link will take you to a flowchart that I created when I was writing.  It shows the different ways that teachers use technology with students. It may seem a bit dated (again completed in 2009), I like to think that rather than engaging students using technology, we engaged them with content and meaningful tasks, and use technology when it fits organically with what our students are doing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-S3mRr_GPMublNXdEYwbEJqdkU/view?usp=sharing

Science Outside of the Classroom

Hi everyone!

I have been brainstorming ways to use blogging in my classroom and content area. One of the things that I try to advocate and promote in my physics class is how the science that we are learning about pertains to real life. Throughout the year I try to have my students do short writing assignments where they relate the content we are studying to an interest or hobby that they have outside of class.

Blog posts might be an effective way to do this in the future. Using a class blog, an assigned student each week could be responsible for blogging about how the content studied that week relates to something that they do in their free time. If they are comfortable doing so, they could include pictures or videos of themselves to make it more personal. Or they could add images and diagrams to help explain the scientific concepts. The other students would then comment on the post, adding to or critiquing the science applications.

Blogging in the Science Department

Hi Everyone!

After reading the posts from Sandra Porter, I have become intrigued about the possibilities associated with portfolio blogs.  I believe that having students create and maintain a portfolio throughout a class (or even throughout their four years at South Western) could benefit them immensely.  I have been impressed by some of the websites produced by students in other departments for performance-based classes, but was not sure how a similar project fit within our science courses.  Having students blog about laboratory techniques they have encountered, as well as data analysis and results, could be a good starting place.  I look forward to discussing these ideas with my colleagues and possibly coming up with a plan that would allow for a consistent experience for the students in several different courses.

Blogging idea for my class

Hello everyone!
Ever since I started the reading for this week I have been thinking about using blogs in my class all the time. I even brought up the idea of a reflection journal during an IEP meeting today and thought that this would be a perfect topic to use for this blog posting. My idea is to have students create a reflection blog that they could make entries on two or three times a week. Topics for their postings could include a brief reflection on what we are learning about at the time, interesting comments or questions that they thought of about the topic, or even a place for them to share stories about related topics. Even more important than the actual blog posting itself might be the responses that the postings could get from their classmates. Responses could answer the questions posed in the original posting, they could also give advise or talk about the topic in a student voice.
I have previously used a bi-weekly current events blog assignment in my AP Environmental Science classes. Students were required to locate, read, and blog about a current event in the environmental sciences every other week. If students weren't writing a new post that week, they would have to leave comments on the posts from two of their classmates. I really liked how this assignment highlighted how the topics in class were actual news events and not just a chapter in a textbook. At the time, we used Blogger and Google+, but I'm sure that there are many other options for a classroom teacher.
Thanks for reading my post- Have a great rest of the day!
Jason

Branches of Biology Pictures

Edcamp: A new form of PD

I'm so excited to share more info about Edcamps! Myself and 7 other planners were working hard all year to put together our second annual Edcamp Hershey, which occurred on Monday morning. Have any of you ever heard of or attended an Edcamp? I might be biased, but Edcamps are probably some of the best professional development around.  Edcamps are considered an "unconference" and are run by teachers, for teachers.



Here I am speaking to the Edcamp Hershey 2016 participants.


Edcamp started with a group of teachers in Philadelphia who wanted a different kind of PD.  Now, it has grown into the Edcamp Foundation, with hundreds of Edcamp events held all over the world! In order to be an Edcamp, the event must adhere to the following tenets:

• Free
• Open to anyone
• Vendor-Free
• Sessions created by participants the day of
• Sessions facilitated by anyone
• "Rule of Two Feet"

As an attendee, when you arrive at Edcamp, you receive a sticky note and are encouraged to write a topic you are interested in learning about, want to discuss, etc.  You do not come with a prepared presentation, nor does on particular person run a session - it's merely a conversation to share resources and ideas with other educators interested in that same topic.

Organizers of Edcamps will then put together like ideas to create the session schedule board.  That's it! Participants can then go to the sessions in which they are interested.  The "rule of two feet" encourages you to move around sessions, especially if a session is not meeting your needs, or if you just want to go to multiple sessions in the same time slot!

For me, Edcamps have become a second home, where I have found some of the best PLN members around! The energy and excitement is contagious, and I have left every Edcamp attended with ideas that I could immediately put into action.

At Edcamp Hershey, we had 215 attendees, with participants from as far away as North Carolina! We started with breakfast and schedule building, official kickoff, three sessions (11 sessions during each time slot = 33 total sessions), snacks, smackdown (resource sharing), and lots of raffle prizes donated by awesome sponsors! It was a wonderful day of conversations along with sharing on Twitter via #sweetpd.  Feel free to check out the Edcamp Hershey website; you can see the session schedule and even click on the resource notes for each session to get some ideas of your own.

I encourage everyone to check out an Edcamp near you! Especially keep an eye out for Edcamp Hershey in 2017!  For more info on what Edcamps are, to apply for an Edcamp Foundation grant, or to see the Edcamp calendar, check out the Edcamp Foundation website, or visit Edcamp Hershey.

Blogging to know you!

Howdy!
It seems that one of the best aspects of blogging is to get students to collaborate and get to know each other better.  I have found that students can be very unaware of the other students around them.  Often at the end of a school year, students cannot tell you the name of another classmate.  Someone they have been in class with all year!  Perhaps by adding in a "get to know you" blog at the beginning of the school year would help the students develop a sense of community.  If they know and like each other, they will work together and be more productive in the classroom.  Students love to take "selfies" so why not incorporate them into the blog?  After creating a community within the classroom, the students could then venture onto more curriculum based activities with the blog.

So, here are some of my top pics of the summer!  See if you can identify the locations!  Have fun :)

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