Inquiry Blog #2 Developing my own ICT Skills and Pedagogy


How can I continue to develop my own skills, learning, pedagogy, and professional development on my own?

I will continue to develop my skills, learning, and pedagogy by continuing to attend professional development seminars and workshops in areas of interest to me (for example; technology, primary literacy, student engagement, environment, and assessment). I will continue to use my Twitter account, join district wiki, blog, or teacher librarian and primary educator sites, collaborate with my fellow colleagues, as well as continue to visit the public library and utilize the UBC Learning Resource Center. Below are some links to the webpages I would like to stay connected with.
                                                       (image retrieved from Pinterest)


Vancouver Public Library and more specifically VPL Kids Programs
VSB Teacher Librarian Special Wiki Page
VSB TL Blog Site

What strategies, tools, resources, and networks can I implement to maintain my explorations and development?

I would want to learn and implement a new app each month and incorporate it into my teaching practice to help further develop my skills and those of my students. In addition, I would want to include more hands on activities such as STEM, DI, Makerspace and other activities such as Break Out in my Grade 2 class and future library space.

                                                       (image retrieved from Edudemic)

To find out more about these apps visit the following website
70 Best Teacher and Student Apps
To find out more about BreakOut, click the following links or watch the video below: 
BreakOut Games
About Break Out Edu



Another video from the BreakOut EDU website through Vimeo is here:
https://vimeo.com/212397610 


I would like to create a class website to update parents on important events or announcements, as well as share student learning and photos. I currently send monthly emails but I think if I made a plan to do this and set a goal to accomplish it by the New Year, I will be proving to myself how I can continue to grow and learn as an educator and enhance my ICT skills. However, before I create this class website, I have to get better at remembering to document my students' learning. I often forget to take pictures, videotape them, and utilize online communication tools. I would still have to decide what platform I would want to use for my classroom, be it my current blogsite for this course or the weebly account I set up for my BEd program, or on Shutterfly (that a teacher recommended to me). Below is my weebly account and the website information if I decide to use Shutterfly for my class website. I might do a poll and ask fellow teachers which one they prefer best for their class websites between my three options (or if you, the reader, has had success with a type of class website that I have not listed, I am all ears!).

http://bshoemaker.weebly.com/
https://www.shutterfly.com/classroom-share/
https://bshoemaker12.blogspot.ca/2017/
I know we are moving towards an ePortfolio platform for Communication Student Learning (CSL) and reporting. Therefore, I would want to make sure I can weave this technology naturally into my teaching and assessments and not feel like it is a foreign concept. I think the first step to success, is getting access to an iPad more frequently and explore the various tools.

A question I am still considering is,
Which platform is the best to use for Primary Education (FreshGrade, Showbie, or Seesaw)? 

Below is a link from a Surrey School District Teacher showing how to add the New Curriculum Reporting Language to a platform like FreshGrade.
https://vimeo.com/235273284 

Or you can watch this video about a success story from SD91 where students, parents, and teachers express their love for FreshGrade.


However, in an earlier blog post I posted about a Kindergarten teacher who liked using Showbie and I have witnessed a Grade 1 teacher using Seesaw to Communicate Student Learning (CSL). So, which one is the best for primary students?

I would also make an effort to attend the weekly “TechnoShare” meetings at my school, which are every Tuesday morning at 8:00am. In addition, I have begun to sign out the iPads once a week to use with my class to explore programs together and to use for research and inquiry purposes.

What are some of the ways that educators and professionals are connecting and sharing their learning?

Some of the ways educators are connecting and sharing their learning is through social media and such sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I would also want to branch out and join provincial specialist associations such as the BCLA, BCTLA, VTLA, MLST, Primary Teachers Association, and TIE-BC. I currently follow most of these organizations and associations on Twitter.

BCLA website
BCTF's BCTLA website and BCTF PSAs


What can I do during this class and after it is over to maintain my connections and networks to further develop my knowledge, experience, and skills?

I would love to continue to use the www.digg.com website to stay connected with my fellow classmates’ blog sites and try some of the tools and strategies we have learned about or used within this class. For example, the video conferencing on Tuesdays nights or "google hangouts" I could see using with other primary teachers or TLs to have a remote meeting from home. The screen sharing option as well, I could use to help students troubleshoot issues if I was working in a Library or classroom setting with many students on laptops. The ongoing digital literacy piece would also be a focus for me. To gain confidence with technology and take risks in trying out new apps and programs on my own and with my students will definitely be something I will continue to do well after this course is finished!

Bibliography

British Columbia Library Association. Connect Home Page. Retrieved from https://bclaconnect.ca/

British Columbia Teacher-Librarians’ Association. About BCTLA. Retrieved from  http://bctf.ca/bctla/

BreakOut EDU. (n.d.). What is BreakOut EDU? Retrieved from https://www.breakoutedu.com/about/

BreakOut EDU. “Introducing BreakOut EDU.” Youtube, commentary by James Sanders, September 24, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWSoR-0DH8Q

Dunn, J. “The 70 Best Apps for Teachers and Students.” Edudemic. September 4, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.edudemic.com/70-best-apps-teachers-students/

School District 91. “Fresh Grade.” Youtube, Published on Jun 21, 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNk-XZYZomM

Shutterfly Class Share Website. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.shutterfly.com/classroom-share/

Surrey School District. “Fresh Grade Assessment Tools”. Vimeo. Commented by Karen Fadum, September 20, 2017. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/235273284

Vancouver Public Library. (n.d.). Kids Programs. Retreived from http://www.vpl.ca/kids/programs

Vancouver School Board. (2013). Teacher Librarian Wiki and Blog pages. Retrieved from http://tlspecial.pbworks.com/w/page/10659852/FrontPage and
http://tlspecial.blogspot.ca/

 




Comments

  1. Aaron Mueller14 October 2017 at 06:19

    Well done blog post! You have outlined many useful ways to stay connected, invested and working towards always professionally developing yourself. You have collected many examples of groups, associations and local organizations within your school and district to join and support moving forward. You also have identified many different avenues for your own exploration and development. I hope that all of these tools, resources and strategies continue to connect you with other passionate T-Ls in our province. Good blog post with engaging media, links, labels and references.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JMendgen14 October 2017 at 20:36

    You raise some good points about online reporting platforms and portfolios. It will be interesting to explore them over the next few years to see what works best for both teachers and students. I can see sharing experiences with other teachers online would be really useful to gather ideas about what works well and to compare different platforms. The teacher of one of my own kids is using Freshgrade for the first time this year. From their weekly schedule, I can see that she has designated time within the week (Thurs afternoon) for students to post in pictures of their work. She first inputs the assignment, but leaves it blank for the students to fill once they've finished it. It's interesting to see as a parent. As a teacher, it seems like a long road ahead to put it into place, especially as I am a secondary teacher so the number of students is large. Interesting times to come!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown15 October 2017 at 10:02

      Yes it is going to be very interesting times to come! But with small steps we will get there. I like how the teacher of your child is starting off slow and just using it once a week! That might be the most manageable as a first time user and then you can go from there! I wonder as a secondary teacher if you would need multiple accounts for each of your classes and what is the best way for you to manage with so many students? Perhaps FreshGrade is not the answer but another platform?

      Delete
  3. Anonymous18 October 2017 at 17:30

    Hi Brittany,
    There are so many excellent ways to share with parents what is going on in our classrooms. Thanks for sharing them! One word of caution that I would like to share is to be super careful about checking photo permission forms. I am noticing that more and more often parents do not want any information about their child posted online, not even on a password-protected site.
    I love that you want to get a Breakout box! My eldest son bought me all the bits and pieces for one for Christmas two years ago. It costs far less to order the pieces from Amazon. Have fun with yours!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown20 October 2017 at 13:55

      Hi Katy,
      Yes I will have to check our media consent forms to see if I have any students who are not allowed photos. One teacher just makes sure no faces are included in her pictures but it sometimes takes away from the posting of an activity if you are having to crop out certain aspects from the picture. Thanks for the tip about Amazon, I will look at the options for Breakout on there!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inquiry #5 Summarizing Topics

Image
In the last few weeks we have researched and discussed some interesting topics about 21 st century learning, information literacy, and reading cultures. I have also grown in my knowledge and skill set as a blogger. I have learned how to imbed videos, hyperlink webpages, label key words, and comment on others’ pages. Some key takeaways I have learned after all this exploration and learning is to take risks and try something new every week; be it a reading initiative, technology app, or manageable on-going professional development. “If you never make mistakes, then you have never tried something new”.                                                                                  Images retrieved from Pinterest The topic I am most passionate about from this phase of our course is “Fostering a reading culture in schools” because I love books and using them in our theme units of study. But the topic that resonated with me and the one I need to wor
Read more

Reading Review #3

Image
My research experience and learning through this inquiry blogging world so far has been a positive one. I had never posted on a blog before but had read some blogs and would be redirected to blogs through certain websites. I enjoy the blogging platform and reading other people’s more personal accounts and opinions on topics (versus using very academic based and often dry, research articles).    My topic of integrating technology successfully into primary classrooms had many hundreds of hits both through library search engines, google, Pinterest, and Youtube. I am a visual learner so I definitely preferred the sites that included pictures, video, graphs, and charts to the long and lengthy written articles where you have to spend a good amount of time reading to see if they have any relevant or interesting information on your topic. A skill set that I need to learn, as a TL and teacher, would be to learn to speed read or scan resources effectively.     
Read more

Inquiry Blog Post #3: Supporting On-Going Professional Development

Image
Supporting Teachers’ ICT Curriculum and Pedagogy: On-going Professional Development   Image courtesy of TeachHub When you work in a large school, it is sometimes hard to connect to each and every staff member on a regular basis. If they do not frequent the staff room or are unable to attend meetings due to various circumstances, you may not see certain colleagues for weeks at a time. How can we share and respond to the needs of our staff in a timely and cohesive manner with the most appropriate and useful professional development tools? This is something every school can continue to work on (as I’m sure there are always going to be a few colleagues who are missing out on various opportunities). For example, using technology as a communication and teaching tool with support networks in place and being flexible when scheduling workshops, meetings, and seminars might be two easy first steps. At our school we have staff meeting on the same day and time ev
Read more