jbedingfield's Blog

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Personal Learning Reflection

This fall I had the opportunity to start graduate classes at Michigan State University. At first the class went over a lot of technology I was use to using.  Then as the week went on the technology grew and I discovered how much I didn't know about using it in the classroom.  Some concepts that I integrated into my classroom this fall were RSS feeds, diigos and wikis.

The Rss feeds have allowed me to stay current in my profession and integrate new and current practices that work all around the globe.  I can use my reader to gain new concepts and ideas to integrate into my classroom.  This helps me meet my goal of staying current that I wrote in my technology plan.

Integrating the internet into my classroom allowed me to explore possibilities with collaboration through great web 2.0 tools such as GOOGLE DOCS and even diigo.  Theses have been a great addition to my classroom because it allows students to work and research on a particular subject no matter what their schedule is.  A lot of times you have other students who don't get the opportunity to collaborate with students from other classrooms or schools and theses tools provides the opportunity for this to happen.  I will continue to use these great tools to help prepare my 8th graders for the 21st century.  The group proposal and presentation really opened my eyes to the possibilities. For me being in another state and working on a group project with another student from another state would be impossible without the use of the internet.  This assignment to me really exemplifies good teaching with technology because one of the goals in education is teaching students how to work with other people. I wouldn't have this opportunity to work with other educators from other states without technology and web 2.0 tools.

I met my goals because I started my journey in technology and have stayed current with practices and teaching philosophies.  I have also taken another step in obtaining my master degree.  Currently, I'm a technology coach which I love.  My new goal is to become a full time technology coach and be able to integrate the new technologies to help students learn and prepare for the 21st century.  

Friday, October 29, 2010

Personal Tech Plan

Over the past year technology has grown in my life.  Going into last school year, I was unaware of how much software and tech tools were available.  My school is a rural school in Northeast Ohio.  We our predominately a farming community with little money, so our school wrote a grant proposal for 250,000 dollars.  The proposal was accepted and our journey began.  ARRA Grant Ohio

During the initial grant accepted months everything seemed to be so cool because we were getting new gadgets to play with.  After getting use to them though, we began working with web 2.0 tools and reflecting on what we learned.  Our team had no idea how much work this grant actually was going to be.  We had to keep journals, begin a wiki and even be observed. The best thing that came out of this was that I learned how a wiki was beneficial in the classroom. My wiki nows gives students a chance to collaborate with others and understand material taught in class.

During our journey, our schools has purchased smartboards, smart slates, elmos, video cameras, flip cameras, digital cameras and laptop carts for grades 6-8.  One of the pitfalls with technology in our district has been the internet.  Our students have had a lot of this technology wasted so far this year because of the bogged down internet connection. Our school district is fighting to purchase more bandwidth, but our grant money can't go towards this purchase.  This makes it a constant battle to get staff to integrate this new technology. Who wants to waste precious time to learn how to use the technology if it takes 20 minutes to gain a strong connection on the laptops?

With all the pitfalls that has happened our district is hopeful that we will have stronger bandwidth by December.  I took it upon myself to teach the students to create a diigo this week in class. This is a great tool for our students to learn.  I simply love this website and the idea of the "networked student".  This class has shown me so many great concepts and tools that I will use with my students, but I decided to start with this one.  I figured while I wait on the internet to gain a stronger bandwidth, I might as well begin having students find great resources for my class and others to use when the internet gets faster.  This way they will create a categorized network for this year and their future. I'm trying to get rural kids from small town Ohio to connect their ideas globally.  I felt like the teacher from rural Georgia. She stated that she is more of a facilitator or coach in the classroom then a know it all teacher.  I want the students to find the great resources and have a place to store them.  I think this video explains the purpose for the diigo assignment: 

Once students begin sharing their diigo and joining groups for other project assignments they will open doors to more web 2.0 tools.  I simply love GOOGLE DOCS! Once students build their database and network. They will be able to use google docs to begin working with students in other classes and maybe for another district on an assignment.  The best thing about google docs for me is the ability to collaborate on one assignment with multiple people while instant messaging them on the changes or additions.  Could you imagine the possibilities?

Before 2009, I wanted to be an administrator and already started my journey toward that goal.  After being in this class and working with the grant, I have found my calling in technology.  I'm excited to continue with this journey in technology and can't wait to see what the next best thing is for my students.  I'm not sure if I will become a tech coordinator or tech administrator, but I know that I will never stop preparing the 21st Century Learner.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Creative Commons

Out door Event:
Outdoor event

This is the photo I took this summer right before a big event. Can you guess what the event was. That's right a wedding. No, it wasn't mine either. This was one of the best weddings I have ever attended. I would try to incorporate an image like this in English class, by using it as a start to a journal prompt. I might even incorporate some technology by having the class podcast using the photo. The students could use their imagination by pointing out all the descriptive details in the image.

SHIFTABLES!!!

shiftables



 Photo Attribution:
Original Image:" SHIFTABLES"
By: Jared Tarbell

http://www.flickr.com/photos/generated/3543387500/
Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/



The above photo is one I found on Creative Commons. This website looks to be very useful for media projects in the classroom.  The videos in the lab explained to me that this is a place where people will only reserve some rights and let others use their material to create or remix it.

My school recently was awarded a grant for 250,000 dollars for grades 6-8 to be used for education.  We looked at getting shiftables for math.  Shiftables actually feed off of one another for example if you had a student who struggled with basic concepts in math this would be a great tool.  Shiftables when put together would be a great tool for IEP students and would fit into our discussion on learning styles.  For example one shiftable would read 9 the next shiftable would read X the next shiftable would be 8 then equals shiftable followed by the answer of 72.  What a great device, but very pricey.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Learning styles Blog post

Throughout my education I have found that I'm a Kinesthetic learner. I learn best when I'm up moving around or actually creating something with my hands.  I hated to sit through long lectures or stay seated for long periods of time. I have found that I'm the same way as an educator. My students almost get whiplash as I walk around the room and give them instructions. 


I think the least effective strategies for me as a student was when a teacher would assign popcorn reading or just have us read a section in the book and fill out a worksheet.  I would forget what the lesson was about right after leaving the class or the next day.  That's why as an educator I find it important to review the material from the previous day and teach the lesson in a new way if needed.


For example, I might use the smartboard for the kinesthetic learner to introduce the lesson one day. The next day after a quick review the auditory learner will pick up the material.  Usually I will group the students after the review so they can learn from others.  Then I would go more in depth with the material by presenting on the elmo and having the students create a visual in their groups.  This is the best way to incorporate every learning style the best one can in the classroom. 


The major focus of an educator should be to identify their struggling students and incorporate their learning styles the best way possible.   For example if the majority of my students who struggle are visual learners and not auditory learners then I will print out the notes and allow them to focus in visually on the smartboard instead of taking notes.  This sometimes helps them visual the concepts easier.  

Friday, October 8, 2010

RSS Page Reflection

I have been following my RSS feeds for the past few weeks. I'm a little nervous about this assignment because I'm not sure if I'm doing everything correctly although I have learned a lot from using RSS feeds. 

I left a few comments of a few different pages, but this blog page from ilearntechnology.com was probably the most full-filling.  Above is the page and the comment I posted to the blog. The blog talked about how a guy is going to donate 1 cent to a charity for every visitor he gets on his site.  His thinking is that he can do a lot with a little.  I think it's a cool concept because I'm constantly, as a Geography teacher, to try to get my 8th graders to think globally. 

The pages had a wide variety of topics on a daily basis. The concepts covered in class were generally found on a few of my pages of my reader.  For example Technology in the Middle  covered digital citizenship and how to setup guidelines for your students in and out of the classroom.  This changed of the next few days because it went from living in the 21st century with digital citizenship to incorporating classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird.  The posted discussed how you can turn a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird into an interactive Prezi review.  I found this very useful in my job because often I run into a teacher whom is reluctant to use 21st century technology in their classroom and wants to stick to the classics.  This is the best of both worlds.  Too many times technology is overwhelming for these teachers and they do find a correlation between the classics and the new.

The scariest but most important thing I learned from the news feeds was the important of digital citizenship.  This is a scary concept because as a parent I need to form an action plan for when my children become a digital citizen.  I read that children born in today's world have hundreds of baby pics on the net being stored at different websites for easy sharing and photo transformation.  After watching some of the videos from the news feeds on how things are stored online and then scan later for viewing is  a scary concept.  Imagine if your child's naked bath photos were online and then access 10 or 15 years later by their friends or even worse a predator!  Could you imagine the embarrassment or potential harm that might become of it? I think it's important for all parents to think before they post and it's important for all teachers to explain this to their students.

Recently after subscribing to some RSS feeds and reading some blogs, I've decided to incorporate this concept into my classroom.  All my students have created wiki pages where they have their own space and page, so this week we talked about how to subscribe to an RSS feed on classroom concepts.  For example students will pick 1 feed to start to follow.  After following for a week they will blog about the feed.  After they blog on the feed, another students will edit their wiki.  The edit will be a post on questions or a reflection of what they learned.  This will incorporate digital grouping and editing an revising.  Not only will students practice their English skills but they will be learning interdisciplinary current events by reading the blogs.  Hopefully I will get other teachers on board with this concept and we can expand this project a little more.

Even though I was a little scared in the beginning, I found this classroom project to be very useful.  I learned that you can do a lot with only a little.  I also learned that one can incorporate the old with the new.  In this every changing world, I found that you must think before you post and think how one click can change anyone's tomorrow.  The most useful thing I learned was how to set up a quicker more efficient way to find and reflect on current events in social studies.  

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

PC Maintenacnce and Security

 In the tutorials I viewed, I learned about some things that will save me some time and secure my computer in the near future.

 The first useful tutorial was one on backing up my computer.  Two weeks ago I learned that choosing the right tool to back up your computer is very important. I lost my harddrive which contained all my lessons including my smart notes from 6 years of teaching, my basketball playbook which was about 125 pages of hard work dating back eight years and the worst of all 3 was my picture and video from the first few years of marriage and having my kids. After watching the tutorial I learned that one should try multiple places to back up their hard drive.  For example one should back up on an external hard drive and also on the internet.  A few easy internet sites to look for is mediamax or even google.   The one I'm going to look into though is allmydata.com.  This site will back up most of your files for a low cost.  I also checked on some review sites and it came highly recommended. 

A lot of times I run into forgetting passwords and user names. I'm sure people everywhere are forgetting many user names and passwords.  The next tutorial I found useful was roboform.com this site allows you to safely secure all your usernames and passwords.  This is going to be my best friend because a lot of times I forget many of my user names and passwords or I do something I shouldn't do and use the same one for everything.  Roboform has a useful toolbar that allows users to save each password for each site with a few clicks of the mouse.  It allows allows you to enter your information for many fill out boxes you might run across. 

Finally the most important tutorial for the future was all the free scanning devices online one can use to find out if their computer is affected with spyware. House call looks to be the best user friendly website to find out if you computer has been infected with some type of spyware.  My wifes computer had many errors and problems this summer, so I wish I would have known about these programs beforehand.  I believe that these free programs need to be out there for many people to use.

In these tutorials I will use the three tutorials that I posted on to share them with my colleagues at work.  It is my job at school to share this information with staff and make them aware that they exist.  I plan on using the online backup from either allmydata or mediamax and I have already signed up for Roboform and have currently been running the program.  The information that surprised me was that there was free spyware scanner on the net that wasn't a virus in itself.  You just never know what is good and what is bad.  I found these tutorials very helpful! Thank you

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Getting things done.

The five stages of getting things done is an important concept for anyone to read.  Personally, I don't know anyone who isn't busy! The collection process is one of the more important items in this process. My collection includes: This class, teaching, coaching, family to do s and many more to list. 
The process is something I found interesting in the reading.  The most interesting item is delegation.  Being a leader in the school system I could delegate to teachers for schoolwork and other coaches for basketball.  Being in a position of leadership allows you to do this, but I haven't found it to be the most productive way.  I always have found if I want something done my way then I better do it myself.

Organizing the to do list is a step that is a working process for me.  I try to do my teaching to do s first because it's my job.  Then I try to do my schooling second, basketball third then I'll probably put off my family to do s until next summer. HA!  Organizing these tasks is the best way to accomplish them.

The doing part of the list is where I really work the hardest.  If I spent more time in the first three parts I probably wouldn't have to work so hard at this step.  One of the basis is "How much energy do you have?" This is a question I have to ask myself all the time.  Usually I leave at 6:30 in the morning to go to morning shootings then start teaching at 7:30 until 3:00.  After school I go home and change and go back to basketball for a few hours. By the time I get home to begin working on the next day in the classroom or schoolwork, it's 8:00.  This doesn't include showering, spending time with my wife and kids or eating. HA!  This probably sounds familiar with everyone reading this I'm sure. Everyone is busy.

Reviewing is something that I'm not really good at yet.  Usually once the tasks is done, it's done.  This is why I put it last on my list. I haven't really learned or had time to learn how to properly review. 

My work flow system will be to collect what I have to do each month.  I will begin adding to my google calendar my list of to do s . Then I will organize it by going through a letting go process of what I can allow others to do, so it frees my time up for more important tasks.  After these two are finished I will begin completing them.  I believe this is a good start to getting things done.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Social Networking

Social networking is branching out each and everyday. Recently, for my graduate class at Michigan State University I had to branch out too. Before I only used wikispaces.com and email to connect with people, but I have found some benefits professionally and personally in joining twitter, blogspot and diigo.
Twitter allows me to get updates from people I want to connect with and block those I don't want to connect with. I recently tweeted one of my professors about the benefits of the einstruction mobi. Even though we are in different states, we could have a quick conversation just like if we were colleagues in the same building. Twitters ability to tag people you want to connect with gives you the power to gain the knowledge about the information you want.
Blogspot allows me to reflect my thoughts and express my opinions about my education. It also allows others to connect with my ideas and add more to them. Blog spot in the classroom would be a great tool because students could take ownership of their education, and that is powerful! Students could follow others in the same educational settings or different and gain empathy through their findings.
Diigo provided me with the opportunity to connect with other teachers in my group to organize educational websites for our presentation and classroom. Diigo gives me a chance to annotate and highlight information that is important then save it and send to others. This might be a helpful tool for intervention specialist to give students a chance to recognize main ideas and supporting details in a passage on the website. I know this is a social bookmarking tool, but the connection that diigo has with its ability to create groups provide a network.
With the ever changing world networking becomes more and more of a powerful tool to provide personal and professional connections with people across the globe. It reminds me of a song I heard once," It's a small world after all."

Glogster



This is my PLN visualization for my class at Michigan State University. Glogster is a cool tool, but can be frustrating when it locks up. I tried to use this web 2.0 tool in my classroom this year instead of making brochures, but the internet connection was so slow that it made it frustrating.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Bundle List




This is my bundle list from Google Reader. Thank to the Q and A forum in the class. Hopefully I'm off to a good start. I learned the importance of Delicious tonight, but reading my blogs. I used portaportal for years in my class, but I think I might switch over to delicious after reading about the toolbar and how easy it is to use. Thanks