Post #4 - All I've Learned and Goals for the Future

Blog Post 4

When embarking upon this course, I was hoping to improve my teaching practices and familiarize myself with technological tools that I could implement in my classroom.  I am happy to say that I have learned and implemented many tools, and in doing so, I have noticed a change in my students’ learning and engagement. 

As “blogs are the first widely adopted easy publishing tool of the Read/Write Web,” I thought this would be a great tool to implement in my classroom (Richardson 2).  In my Reader’s Workshop units, I have had the students reflect on their readings, demonstrate mastery of mini-lessons, etc. all within our class blog.  As the year progresses, I will be working to add more collaboration to these blog entries.  For instance, one hindrance of the literature circle unit is that I can only listen to one group at a time, and even if I record the students’ conversations, I can only add to their conversations during the next day’s lesson/discussions.  By having students do some “discussing” on a group blog, I am able to assist and facilitate as much (or as little) as needed.

I have also personally used GoogleDocs, while collaborating with fellow teachers to work on creating a new reading and writing curriculum.  I have not yet begun the poetry unit (TIP), but I am very excited to implement GoogleDocs within that unit.  By allowing students to edit and revise their peers’ pieces online, I will have been able to “construct, develop, sustain, and participate in [a] global network that render[s] time and place less and less relevant” (Richardson 9). 

I have not yet done a Literature Circle unit this year with my students; however, as I was perusing sites and reading our two books for class, I got some excellent ideas for culminating activities which my students could work on collaboratively to demonstrate their understanding and analysis of the text.  One example of such activity is below:

http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=175121&title=Tuck_Everlasting6

Over this semester, I feel that I have learned a great deal and have begun to transfer that knowledge and activities to my class.  In the future, I would like to learn a little bit more about how I can work to get this implement in earlier grades.  If students came to me with some of these skills already, I would be able to drive head-first with blogging and GoogleDocs, and then I could teach them using some more challenging tools like Glogster and Podcasting. 

I hope you all have had success as well and hopefully we will all collaborate in classes in the future. 

Richardson, W. (2010).  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.