I have grown leaps and bounds. Looking back I was not sure how I was going to implement technology into my daily teaching practice. Now, it is imperative that I use it. I mean I can do some stuff without it but why should I? I have it, I know how to have my students work with it and I am helping the environment in the process...Haha How you ask? Well I have a secret goal/experiment to cut back on my paper consumption. So at the beginning of each semester we are given a new box of paper that I believe has 8 or 10 reams of paper. Well I had 1 ream left over from last year. So I believe I am into my 2nd ream from the box. So, that means that I have used so far 2 reams and a portion of the 3rd. Those reams have been mainly used for tests, quizzes and attendance sheets. Which will be cut back with my new goal of using google forms to make my tests and quizzes.
This has all been helped by me being called to be the technology specialist at my school. Me and my team of other 8th grade teachers are facing the learning gap with 21st century ideas. We are learning new things daily and we are growing while helping our students grow. I look forward to learning how to better help my students. I want to say that I am so proud of some of my EL students. They have grown to the level that they can be removed from the EL program. We will watch them closely but I think they will be removed come January. That makes me happy. I think that it is through technology they have grown. Ok rant over.
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So my project is based on the flipped model. One of the things that sold me on this approach of teaching is giving the power of learning directly to your students. I love the concept of just being a “facilitator” of knowledge and they come to me or I provide them with what I want them to know. One thing that I discovered is that they can learn at their own pace. It builds their confidence because they find the answers to the questions they need and they all learn in their own way.
When I first started trying to flip my class I was worried about what exactly I would do. Dr. Helen Hawley gave me the simple formula it goes like this. In flipped classrooms, you want to take the passive learning and have the students do that. For example the lecture or reading or the video watching, you have the students do that on their time. Now, lectures or powerpoints or readings can all be given to the students, you may need to record lectures and post them somewhere that is accessible for them (google classroom, a blog…) then the stuff they would have down at home is then done with the whole class. So basically you take the passive stuff for the the students to do on their own and have them do active things during class time. Something else that Dr. Hawley coined was student driven learning. Student driven learning is at the base of flipped learning. They become the master of their own ships. They control and have the power to make or break themselves. Now for those of you who want to still have some control you just choose how much “self learning” you give them. I already implement flipped learning into my class. I am going to amp it up next year (January) so my students are going to be more accountable for their education. I give assignments to my students all through google classroom. My school is in the process of becoming a 21st century school. I look forward to using this a lot in my class. |
Adam
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