Growth as educator

What is one way in which you grew as an educator from this class and how will you continue it?

In this class, I actually learned a lot of cool stuffs. I never know that technology can be such a great tool to be used in classroom. I know that technology cab be separated into personal use and teaching and learning purpose. For students, teachers can use technology to help them learn in a better way. Even though some teachers struggling with using technology in their curriculum, but I think using technology in classroom is a must do thing in the future. I am graduating this semester which means I can start to use technology in my future class. I think I am going to continuing doing research on educational technology tools and hope one day I will do my PhD in this area.

Underage Reflection

    Since the internet is so well-developed in the 21st century, we can't forbid our students to use the social networking services. I think what we need to do as a teacher is to teach our students how to use those social networking services properly. I think underage students using social networking services has been an issue for a while. I remembered when I was about 13 or 14, I had curious on a lot of things, that time was when the internet started to become more popular. All I wanted to do after school was browsing the internet. Of course, there were something as an underage students should not see. But somehow I did, because it was an ad poped out when I was searching for something funny.
    Nowadays, since Facebook is so popular, everyone literally has an account. But I think there is a age rule so that they can prevent underage students to sign up? Even so, who will actually follow that rule? We all know that teenagers like to break the rule and challendge it. So, how can we prevent this happen? I think we have to start from the basics. I think we can create some mini lessons to teach our students how to use social networking services properly, not just simply tell them "you can't do this" or "don't do this". Instead, we should give them some reasons why they shouldn't do that.

Reflection on teaching OR project

Did you learn about your teaching style in the OR project? - Discuss your teaching strengths and weaknesses from this on blog.

    After teaching technology to someone for this project, I think I have a different view of my teaching style. Usually I think teaching is really not a hard thing to do when I was teaching back at home. I think I am really good at teaching subject such as math, Chinese, and English to a group of students. But I have learned a lot from teaching someone how to use technology. I think it was a bit hard for me to do it when I was preparing for this project. I could teach myself how to use a technology pretty easy and I learn fast. When I was creating the handout, I found it was hard for me to write steps for the technology I was going to teach because I didn't if the handout I made was understandable for someone. 
    I think my strengths of teaching are: I can deal with a group of students and help them with their questions in class, create good activities in class for different subjects, deal with different situations which may happen in a sudden during class. Those are things I can do really well when I am teaching. My weaknesses of teaching are: I don't really to teach younger age students like first and second graders, because I don't which subject is too easy and which is too hard for them, and sometimes I have a hard time to understand students' questions in class.  
    Overall, I think I learned a lot from this project. This project helped me to make sure my teaching style is good for people. I think teaching how to use technology is way different from teaching subjects such as math in school because you need to self-taught yourself and do a lot of research. There is no teacher manual for you to use in teaching technologies especially when the technology you are going to teach is really new. 

Professional Development Plan

Standard 2: Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments.

1.      Skill I have: I already knew how to use some famous technology tools to teach in class such as Prezi.

2.      Need: I will need to make my skills toward using Prezi more effective, and also need to learn how to use Prezi to incorporate with smart board or interactive whiteboard. And then I need to learn how to use prezi as an assessment tool to evaluate students’ work.

3.      Short Term Plan: I will start to practice to use Prezi more and get familiar with its functions and practice how to use it to integrate with smart board or interactive whiteboard. I think I can finish this process by the end of this semester.

4.      Long Term Plan: I will have to learn and practice how to use Prezi to do evaluation, and make a report to discuss how Prezi can be an assessment tool for teachers to use in class. I think will start to work on that next semester.

5.      Goal: I think I will need to create a workshop for teachers to use Prezi to teach and evaluate. I also think that teachers’ perspectives on this workshop can help me to determine whether Prezi can be a tool to teach and assess or not.

Teaching with Technology project

    I am going to teach how to use apps for Chinese learning on iPad, and also how to incorporate iPad with Smartboard. Those apps I have been playing with are all free on iTunes, anyone who is interesting in learning Chinese is easy to use. When someone who is completely new to Chinese, those apps I chose will be a good start. Normally, when someone is learning Chinese, the difficult parts are pronunciation and writing Chinese words. Those apps I chose is focusing on Chinese word writing and how to pronounce Chinese word correctly.
    I am still processing how to use those apps to teach someone with iPad, but I think it should be really good. I was actually surprised by these apps, I wish I could have know how to use those language learning apps when I was learning English. It is amazing when I was using iPad to find those apps, there are tons of apps provided on iTunes that you can download either for free or pay. Since my project focus is on free apps, so I will just teach how to use those free apps. It is glad to know that there are a lot of people are trying to learn Chinese. I am looking forward to how my work in class soon!

Ertmer & Leftwich

    This article talks about teacher technology change. In this 21st century, technology integration is important for learners. The authors suggest that it is no longer appropriate for teachers with low-level technology skills to meet the needs of new learners. Also, in this article, the authors discuss four different variables that change teacher technology use (knowledge, confidence, beliefs and culture).
    For knowledge, the authors suggest that teachers need to broaden their conception of good teaching to include ideas that teaching is effective when we combine technology. Also, knowing how to use hardware and software is not enough for teachers to use technology effectively. In order to use technology to support their teaching, teachers need to know the knowledge of technology, not just knowing how to use it but knowing how to incorporate into classroom.
     For self-efficacy (confidence), the authors suggest that self-efficacy may be more important than skills and knowledge among teachers who use technology into curriculum. Teachers' confidence plays a key role when they are incorporating technology into classroom. So does beliefs. Also, the culture press has been addressed in this article. The authors indicate that culture pressure can be a positive factor to affect teachers to integrate technology into classroom.
    I think this article points out the important ideas about the change of teachers to use technology into classroom. I like the authors discuss into four different categories so that I can have a more clear idea. Because I am doing my graduation project about integrating technology to support vocabulary development in classroom, so I found it really easy to understand for me. I do think as a teacher we need to keep learning new technology, but time management is always the concern, I don't think we need to learn every single one of them but just the one is commonly used in the classroom. And I think practicing how to use new technology before you incorporating in your class is really important. You don't really want to waste your time figuring out the new technology in class. I have to admit, it is not an easy job, but as a teacher, we somehow need to do it. According to Hansen (2008), teachers should consider ICT as an assisting tool, it may never replace the role of teacher in a classroom, but those who use technology may replace those who don’t.
 

Improve my technology skill

I think I am not 100% a technology person, but I like to try new things. I remembered when iPhone first came out, I have no idea why Apple made this phone because back in that time, people are using cellphones as communicating tools with only text and phone calls. But few years later, smartphones became the popular phone that everyone needs to have one, so from that time I started to play with it. I think technology is developing too fast we can not always use the fresh tool in class but we can definitely try something is new for us. I am doing my graduation project now, so I have to try a lot of technology tools to use in the classroom. So, I did a lot of researches trying to find some good ones that can help my students to learn vocabulary. And I found out it is really difficult. I have to say that at the first time I didn't think using technology would be a difficult thing, but after I taught a few lessons, I think it is not that easy. The way I can improve my technology skills is trying to find a couple one that I think it's useful and has a great future in education setting then just practice over and over again until I feel comfortable to use it in class. Of course, when new technology comes out, I will definitely try it out!

Chapter 5- Sandholtz

    Chater five talks about redefining teacher and student roles in using technology. Traditionally, teacher knows a lot of the curriculum and class management, but in today's world, teachers feel discomfort about knowing little more than their students about technology. In this chapter, the author mentions that teachers started to have some students work on different software so that they can be the experts to help other students when they have trouble. Peer turoring is another key idea in this chapter, have students to teach each other about different technology, instead of sitting there quietly, students become more active. This suddent increase the interaction between students and also, in some cases, teachers found out that if they teach one or two students how to do something on comupter, then they don't need to worry about spend a lot of time to help other students because they will just learn from their peer. Also, the author talks about the unanticipate benefits by peer tutoring. Peer tutoring makes student who is less value blossom, unpopular students gain approval...etc. At the end of this chapter, the author discusses about the new two dimensions about the role of student experts. First, student starts to share their expertise with people other than the ACOT classroom, second, teacher allows student to teach one another subject matter content in addition to technological information.
    I think in this 21st century, as a teacher, we need to think about our role when we are teaching with technology. Obviously, our students sometime spend more time than us to learn new technologies. As a teacher, we have too many thing we need to deal with every day. So, it is hard for us to learn every single new technology. I think the idea about having a couple students to be the experts of different technology tools is good because they can be our assistants when we are teaching. At the same time we can still focus on the content area we are trying to teach in the classroom. It does save a lot of our time to solve some technological problem may occur during the class.

Chapter 4- Sandholtz

    Chapter four starts to explain the details in three stages mentioned in chapter three. First, in the entry stage, teachers may meet those situations which will somehow put them in nervous, such student's misbehaviors by using technology. For example, students use technology for different purposes, not for learning. Problems related to physical environment such as the weather. Most important, technical problem such as computers out for repair for weeks. Those are some issues that teachers will face in this entry stage.
    Second, in the adoption stage, teachers start to developed strategies to solve problems mentioned above and restrictions for using computer for both group and student. In this stage, teachers start to have their own way to figure out how to solve basic problems when technology are not avaliable.
    Thrid, in Adaptation stage, teachers start to use technology to their advantage in manage the classroom. It is different from the previous stages, the teachers integrate technology to facilitate them to manage their class and solve students' misbehaviors.
    I think this chapter is really interesting to read, after reading the evolution stages on chapter three, this more detail information make sense to me now. I think most teachers are still using the entry stage methods to solve problems, for example, when there is a technical problem occurred, most teacher will just stop teaching and asking for help. But I think as a teacher, even without technology, our curriculum still need to go on. I think it would be hard for teachers to get to the adaptation stage because even though we already used a lot of technologies in our curriculum, but using it to manage a classroom seem like a big challedge.

Chapter 3- Sandholtz

    Chapter three talks about the evolution of teaching instruction which is integrating technology into curruculum. Technology has been use in science, business and industry for many years. Also, researches has proved the effectiveness of using technology on those areas. When it comes to education, things are different. There is not enough evidence to prove that using technology in education setting can be more effective. Also, using technology in education adds another layer of complexity. There are several reasons mentioned in this chaper, the most important factor is personal belief. Beliefs govern behavior, so the process replacing the old one with new one becomes critical. Meanwhile, replacing old teaching with new teaching takes time. In this chapter, the author discusses about the stages of instructional evolution: entry, adoption, adaptation, appreciation and invention. Each stage has been well explained in this chapter.
    I think right now is 21st century, most of teachers somehow already knew how to use technology into their curriculum, the differences will be how much they actually use. I know that this book is not really new, so some infomation in it may be not true for today. I do believe that personal belief can change our behavior, if I believe I can use this new technology in my class, then I will try to learn this one before I use in my class. Even though it is 21 st century now, a lot of schools still have older teachers. Those teachers should be our priority to help them to learn those new technologies. In order to make our teaching more effective, I think integrating technology into curriculum is a must do.

Video Project

I think I am going to use iMovie to finish my video project. I think I am pretty much figure out how to use iMovie, so I believe I can do a good job.

Chapter 11

    Chapter 11 simply talks about the top ten rules that govern school authority over student cyber expressions. The authors lay out the ten rules, and give information for each rule. What should school have to do, what should school not to do.
    I think these rules gave me ideas that what should do when we govern student cyber expressions, kind of like how to prevent cyberbullying happen. Only this chapter actually laid out some rules that we can have more clear idea. Overall, I think this chapter is interesting to read.

Chapter 10

    Chapter ten talks about cyber bullying, as we all know, bullying happens in school all the time, sometimes it is big, sometimes it is not. On the other hand, cyberbullying is different from the bullying we know. It happens throughout the Internet, it can happen in anytime, any minute. So, in this chapter the authors talk about how to actually prevent cyberbullying happen in school. First of all, the most common question we ask is "How can cyberbullying be prevented?" The traditional way to prevent this happen is to forbid kids to go online. In the authors' point of view, that is the least appropriate course of action. The authors state "It is critical to provide them with  a clear road map and framework for staying safe and being responsible online and to check in on them regularly to make sure they are following through." They also talk about parents, teachers, children etc, they all have role to play in preventing cyberbullying. So, for the rest of this chapter, the authors discuss the roles that teachers, parents and students should play when we talk about cyberbullying.
    I think cyberbullying is actually a big concept when we allow students to use technology in school. Because it is hard to imagine how fast that cyberbullying will happen. I think it can happen in any minute in class because some students actually will have smartphone in their hand, so they can simply just move their finger and send messages through texts, and that may cause cyberbullying. So, I think it is important for teachers to learn how to prevent this happen in school. There is no way we can say "Please stop using your phone" or "Don't use internet at school" Even though you do ask this kind of questions, I am sure your students will not obey your rules because we were used to be students too, and we like to break the rules and challenge our teachers. So, in order to prevent this happen, we need to think outside of the box. Simply just let them know what is cyberbullying, what will happen if someone got bullied, what we should do to prevent this happen, etc. I think this will help students understand why we want to prevent cyberbullying happen in school. Also, talk to the parents and let them facilitate to prevent this happen is another solution to prevent cyberbullying happen.

Chapter 9

    Chapter nine talks about contract and policy which I think it's the most important thing when you utilize technology in schools. First, the author introduces what is contract, in fact, school policies may be the most widely used contract. Contracts can be customized which will fit the audience's need. So, different contracts may not be apply for the same group. Also, how can school let parents and students know if they have a new policy, they simply just publish and distribute the policy and put parents and students on notice. AUPs (Acceptable Use Policies) have been well addressed in this chapter as well. Later on this chapter, the author talks about the role of the schools when it comes to AUPs, the author states "School leaders need to identify all the foreseeable risks to students, teachers, and staff and take reasonable precautions to minimize those risks." On page 155, the author provides five-step plan for drafting school policy and also on page 156, the author provides a sample for us to see. From page 159 to 166, the author provides example of AUP for us to see.
    I think policies are the important part of schooling, schools rely on policies so that they can utilize everything they need. In this chapter, I realized that it is hard to make a school policy because you have to consider a lot of thing before you actually publish the policy. Especially for technology, in school, technology is just a tool to facilitate students' learning, so as a school leader, we need to think about all the consequences when we allow technology using in school. I think sometimes this is a hard part to decide because we don't really know what we should allow students to access technology what we should not. I think the good part of this chapter is that the author gives me a view of how to make policy for different purposes. Even though I am not a school leader, I think it is still useful for me to know this information because in classroom, I am actually a leader, so somehow I need to make classroom policy to fit my students' need, and this chapter will help me to make this easier.

Chapter 8

    Chapter eight talks about the assessment in partnership pedagogy. The author starts with thinking about what assessement is for. He states "That is, tests allow us to ranl individuals, schools, and even countries by who is ahead and who is behind." Here is the question he asked in this chapter "Does any of this really help individual students?" In his judgement, it does not. From page 140 to 143, he provides different useful assessments that can help us to exam the partnership pedagogy. Such as Ipsative Assessment, Peer Assessment, Real-world Assessment, and Self-Assessment. Each assessment has been well discussed in this chapter. Also, later in this chapter, the author talks about assessing not just students' progress, but teachers, administors, parents, schools and even nations and the world's progress. Of course, to assess different groups' progress, the author provides guidelines for us to see how we can actually assess those progresses.
    I think assessment is always a way for teachers to assess students' progress in every subject. Or we can say that, every subject need to be assessed so that we can see if our students are learned or not. I think this chapter is interesting because it is not talking about how to assess a subject, instead it talks about how to assess partnership pedagogy. It is a little bit different than I think about assessment. I have been doing reading assessment for one of my classes, and all I do is just follow what the book says, but I think this pedagogy assessment gives me another view about assessment.

Chapter 3

    Chapter three talks about strategies that can help teachers/leaders to adopt new technologies. Also, expend school leader's understanding about how innovations spread and how to support innvations. In this chapter, the authors discuss how to adopt innovation, started from understanding the process. They state that "It is important, of course, to support individuals moving forward as they are ready, and not to punish or threaten those who are unable to adopt the innovation, whatever it may be." This explains that even though people cannot adopt new technology within a certain period, we should not blame or punish them because they need more time to adopt it. Also, on page 45 Figure 3.1 explain how the process work for people to adopt innovation. A school leader must be able to recognize a well-designed, technology-rich lesson. Later in this chapter, the authors talk about steps that can change the culture, start with professional development continuum and professional learning community. It is unfortune that a great deal of professinal development which has been focused on technology has been ineffective. The authors use DuFour's statement (2004) suggest that to create a professional learning community, focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively. Later in this chapter, the authors discuss about a technology-rich lesson, and provide us guidelines that if we see it and we will know it on page 54 and 55.
    I think in this chapter I learned a lot about how to promote teachers to adopt new technologies, I know that it is really hard for teacher to adopt new things once a while, especially for older teachers, most of them are not willing to change at all. It is important for school leader to think about how to help those teachers to adopt new technologies. Like Dr. Cullen said in class, there is one day, your principal bought a new stuff for you to play, and you have no idea what is that but been asked to create a lesson to teach the rest of the teachers in school. I think that certainly will freaks me out. And I agree that, when teachers are learning new technologies, the key point is learning, not teaching, how to create an effective learning lesson for teachers to adopt new technologies is the most important part. I believe if school leader can develop this kind of lesson for teachers such as workshops, I think it will benefit both teachers and students at the same time.

My thought about common core

    For me, common core is a new phrase that I never heard of before I started my graduate school. Maybe there is some similiar standards back in my country, but honestly, I don't really know. The first day I started my gradute class, I kept hearing my classmates talk about common core, but I have no idea what were they trying to say, so I was just sat there and listened. Unitl last semester I took a class with Dr. Ruan, and she asked us to bought this book "Pathways to the Common Core" by Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman (2012). I think this book really helped me to understand more about Common Core..
    In this book, the authors introduce all the infomation about Common Core head to toe, when I was reading it, I was overwhelmed because there are so many infomation that I need to know and try to understand. This book provides me all the standards of reading, writing, speaking and listening in Common Core. I know that Common Core was developed by a group of people, no one really know who they are, the only thing we know is that they somehow developed those standards for teachers to follow so that teachers can teach students with it.
    I heard from some of my friends who is teaching in elementary school, they said that only elementary school teachers should worry about adopting Common Core in their class curriculum, they said they middle school and high school teachers somehow already adopting Common Core in their curriculum. I don't really know what that means, but I think because middle school and high school are upper level education, so maybe that's why they don't need to worry about Common Core? My study is always focusing on elementary education, so for me, I am really scare to adopt Common Core when I am teaching. With limited knowledge, it is hard for me to use those standards to teach my students. I think there must be a lot of workshops for teachers to understand better about Common Core, and I think that is where I can get a lot of useful information from.

Chapter Seven

Summary-chapter 7

    Chapter seven talks about how to use web 2.0 to help ELLs to learn, not just English, but those common subjects such as science and math. The author states that the numbers of ELLs are growing each year, which also says that no matter you are ESL teacher or not, your classroom will definitely have ELLs. In this chapter, the author discusses why web 2.0 can help ELLs. Because web 2.0 can provide students with extra opportunities to do meaningful language learning at home, this can certainly help students with low confident in the classroom. Also, web 2.0 can involve students in activities that expand their problem-solving skills. At the end of this chapter, the author provides guidelines to explain how to prepare ELLs for this 21^st century and the TESOL standards

    When I was reading this chapter, I have a lot of thought about how to use web 2.0 to help ELLs to learn. English is not my first language, so I consider myself is an ELL, but when I was learning English, my entire class were ELLs, so there was no problem for us to learn because everyone was learning no exception. So I don’t really know how can web 2.0 help ELLs, but after considering the situation is in the U.S. so the majority of students are not ELLs, so the circumstances may change. Like the author suggests, web 2.0 provides ELLs the opportunity to practice English at home alone or with parents. I believe with web 2.0, ELLs can learn faster than the traditional way.

Chapter Five

Summary-chapter 5

    In this chapter, the author talks about teachers should know about youth and digital media. She states “Today’s student is likely to engage daily in numerous literate practices, from print to film to multimodal forms such as websites and video games.” Also, three tough questions have been addressed in this chapter for teachers to think about those answers. The major part of this chapter is to discuss what is new media? As the author suggests, new media is an umbrella term which used to describe technologies of late 20^th century and that are new. On page 85, the author provides the characteristics of new media environment which are peer-based learning, collaboration, creativity, interest-driven practices and friendship-driven practices. Also, at the end of this chapter, the author provides an example of a teacher’s perspective by using technology in the classroom.

    The most interesting class I took was the reading guide class when I was junior in college. The teacher not only used print to teach, but used videos, movie clips, and sounds to facilitate his teaching. I think that was amazing, it let me know that teaching can be fun as well. In order to understand the youth trend, as a teacher, we need to engage ourselves with our students. We need to know what’s the hot topic students are talking about, certainly internet can help us to do that. I think new media in today would be iPad, iPod, Kindle, etc. those technologies transfer the way we used to read, we don’t need to go to the library to borrow books, now we can just use those technology tools to download them.

Chapter Four

Summary-chapter 4

    In this chapter, the author discusses the role of teachers in technology teaching. Teachers are not the one who teaches how to use technology tools anymore, instead they are digital immigrants. He states that teachers don’t need to know a lot of technical skills; they need an ability to manage the use of many technologies in the classroom. In the traditional classroom setting, teachers are like the governor who controls everything in that classroom, and they often isolated themselves in it. This chapter suggests that teachers should seek for help and support in their schools. Like other two chapters mentioned before, this chapter suggests teachers to shift their control, let students to the controlling when they are learning, teachers are not just teachers, they are facilitators, editors, guides, etc.

    I agree that teachers should always seek for help from others, because sometimes others’ suggestions will help a lot. I’m not sure about teachers should not know too many of technical skills because if students have those kind of trouble and it will takes time to find the answer or cannot find the answer at all. I think teachers need to attend the technical workshop, and know the basic knowledge about those technical skills so that they can help students to solve the problems. I think it is hard for teachers to shift control because they were controlled by their teachers so obviously they will control their students, but it is 21^st century not, I think teachers need to adjust the attitude to help students learn.

Chapter Two

Summary-chapter 2

    Chapter two talks about how school needs to change to fit every student. In this 21^st century, no single teaching and learning approach can serve the needs of every student. The authors discussed that more and more students and parents are becoming dissatisfied with the inflexibility of schools. Also, schools will be customized to meet the specific needs of each community. In this chapter, the authors talk about the real issue that schools will face. They state “The most important issue facing schools today is not how to incorporate the fantastic new technology we have discussed.” and “No, the most important issue facing schools today is the reluctance of those in control of education to let go of what they are used to, whatever their role in the system.” As we can see, “Let go” is the words that telling schools to do in this 21^st century.

    I think the point of the chapter is good, but I think there are still a lot of challenges schools will have to deal with in different places such as common core and standard test. From where I am from-Taiwan, I know that schools are still stay in the same system as 20^th century; I can see that it is really hard for them to change. I agree that every students are unique, school needs to satisfy everyone of them but schools cannot give each teacher just one student, that’s outrageous. I think school can eventually change to what we are expecting they are for this 21^st century, it just needs time and money to fulfill.

Chapter One

Summary-Chapter 1

    In chapter one, the author talks about a new pedagogy for new educational landscape which is partnering. He mentioned that young students need to focus on using new tools, finding information, making meaning and creating. Also, teachers are not just the one who gives students all the information; instead, teachers need to focus on questioning, coaching and guiding. The author used metaphor to imply that students as rockets, and teachers as rocket scientists. On the other hand, the author explains how partnering works. He states “Letting students focus on the part of the learning process that they can do best, and letting teachers focus on the part of learning process that they can do best.” With technology, student roles in partnering are researcher, technology user and expert, thinker, etc. As teachers’ roles in partnering are coach and guide, goal setter, learning designer, etc.  

    After reading this chapter, I felt I learned a lot from it. When I was learning, we didn’t have a lot of technology tools that we can use in class, so the only way we can learn was taking notes from our teachers. For me, teacher is the only one who can give me knowledge and answer all my questions, but in today’s world, we have technology as a strong resource for us to teach ourselves. I think for teachers, they need to adjust their attitude about using technology in their teaching, they are not the only one who can give the answer, instead of teaching students everything, who not just let them teach themselves and we just help them when they need.