SMART Boards in the Classroom

First we used chalkboards, then came whiteboards, and now classrooms are using SMART Boards. A Smart Board is an interactive whiteboard that uses touch detection for user input in the same way as normal computer-like devices. Smart Boards allow students to get hands on with their learning, and it's a great tool for them to begin sharing information. A teacher can use its features to share their lessons and get feedback on multiple screens when using the board. The smart board is a great example of how we keep innovating technology to enhance education.

During my years in school, teachers began using SMART boards around my 8th grade year. At first I thought they were so cool because you could draw on them like a white board. I think this tool is great for teachers, but just like with all technology, there are hiccups that come along with it. From my experience, it can be very glitchy and you don't quite know what's going to happen. With that being said, I think it's a great tool for teachers to use in elementary classrooms because students can interact with it. 

Check out this article about SMART boards in the classroom!


Image source: EdTech Review

Movies in the Classroom

Growing up it was always a big deal if we watched a movie during class. Sometimes after we would finish a book we were reading as a class, we would watch the movie. The movie took up two whole class periods, woo hoo! Not only was it a way to get out of doing boring school work, the movie really helped my learning and understanding of the book.

Watching a movie in class was very rare, it usually only happened once or twice a year. The movies that we did watch, however, still stick out in my mind. I remember the movies and the books very vividly because watching the movie helped me understand the concepts we were learning. I think many teachers are nervous about showing movies in class because they may think it's a waste of time because it takes up so much class time that students could be sitting at a desk learning.

Finding a good movie that correlates with the content students are learning can be difficult. There's a great website called Teach with Movies that helps teachers pick out a movie for students to watch in class that will go with their lesson. Teachers can choose from any subject and category and it gives a list of movies that would go along with the lesson. It's a great tool for teachers!!

The movie that stuck out to growing up was called "Jakob The Liar". We watched it when learning about WWII and I learned so much from the movie and what it was like during that time.

Video from youtube; Photo from Pinterest

Personal Learning Network

This semester, I have been working on furthering my Personal Learning Network (PLN) by doing a number of things to expand my thinking. This creates an avenue for my teaching career to connect with social media of Twitter and Pinterest. As time progresses, technology in the classroom is becoming more apparent and students are becoming very connected to technology. Educators must begin to prepare for this change. I created a Twitter and Pinterest account to begin preparing for when I become a teacher. Social media is a great way to connect with students in a creative way that will get their attention and engage them in learning.

In the beginning of the semester, I created my Personal Learning Network map. This shows how I discover information.

Once I started thinking of more ways I could further my personal learning network, I created a Twitter account so I could follow educators and partake in the chats they have online.  I decided to make this account because I think it is very helpful to myself as a soon to be teacher to start interacting with other educators, so when I become a teacher and have my own classroom, I will have some people and resources to use. This will benefit me currently as a student because I will be able to use this for resources for other classes and also just for my own information.


I tweeted to an ed-chat group asking a question about building my resume as a soon to be teacher. I used two hashtags to enter into educational group chat pages. I decided to use this resource because it's a good way to engage in conversation with other educators and it's another way to build relationships and gain followers.  Although I didn't get a response to my question, it allowed me to look through the chat and get more ideas of what the topics are that people tweet about. This could be a valuable tool to use as a teacher if I would need advice on something.


Through Twitter, I also found a teacher/blogger profile which led me to the article Are the Students THINKING?  This article is on a teacher tech blog and it is written by Alice Keeler.

This was a great article about giving students difficult problems with hints and strategies on how to solve it, but are teachers thinking about what the students are actually thinking? Basically, are students knowing what they are doing or are they just following steps? This was an eye opening article for me because I know throughout much of my schooling, I simply went through the steps without actually fully understand WHY I was doing it. This is a great article to keep in mind when I become a teacher because I want my students to fully understand something rather than simply going through the steps.

I previously had a Pinterest account and I had began working on creating a Pinterest board called "Future Classroom". I use this board to pin ideas for activities or lesson plans for myself to use in my classroom or even currently as a student in some of my classes. I think this is an awesome tool to use currently and when I become a teacher because, like Twitter, it allows me to be able to connect with other educators and use some of their ideas and implement those ideas in my lesson plans or classroom.

I realized I wasn't following any teacher's boards on Pinterest, so, I searched some teacher boards and found a few teachers who pinned many teaching technology items on their boards. Following these teachers will help me currently as a student because I will be able to connect with them and share ideas. This will also help me when I become a teacher because I will already have these resources and ideas on my page.





I use Facebook a lot but unlike Pinterest and Twitter, I hadn't began to use it for furthering my personal learning network. I decided to find teacher profiles and follow a few. One that stood out to me was a page called "Teachers With a Sense of Humor". I thought this would be a great page to follow to diversify the content on my social media. I think it's very important to have a sense of humor when teaching. I'm sure some days will be difficult, so, having some humor on my timeline will be refreshing when I come home from a bad day.

Blogs are one of my favorite things to read and keep up with. I follow many blogs on my own because they inspire and inform me. I decided to search some good teacher blogs so I could begin reading and gathering ideas for my future classroom. I found a blog called the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. I was first drawn to the blog because of the name. I mean how funny is that! As I was reading through her posts, I realized not only is the name funny, but the content is very good. She covers everything from technology in the classroom to ways to bring out the best in your students. This will be a great tool for me to use currently and in the future when I become a teacher to gather ideas and to inspire me to be a great teacher everyday. 

Discovering new tools to use as a teacher is so exciting. I went to the Symbaloo website and started playing with the website. I think this would be such a great tool to use as a teacher! I found a lesson plan about energy that is already written for you. As a teacher, you may not use the exact lesson plan, but it would give you great ideas or starting point to teach the students. I signed up for Symbaloo and plan to keep it in my tool box for when I need ideas for a lesson plan or when I start creating lesson plans for assignments currently as a student. They have many lesson plans already made, or you could create your own lesson plan using Symbaloo. I think students would love this because it's using technology and they are able to engage and interact with the lesson instead of just listening. This is a great new way for students to learn!

Lynda is another great tool to use. I wasn't aware of the extent of the Lynda website and how great of a tool it is. I looked through the different videos and decided to watch one about utilizing Google Drive. Learning how to navigate google drive effectively will help immensely throughout the rest of my schooling at UNI and when I have my own classroom because most likely the school I work at will use google drive. Hopefully I will be able to help my students understand and use google drive to their advantage. Either way, google drive is a great tool to help get organized and utilize the apps that are available to us. 

Just like with Lynda, as I explored the Ted Talk website, I was dumbfounded with all the videos and information they have. The first video I watched was 3 Rules to Spark Learning. This speaker was a chemistry teacher and he talked about how to get students interested in the topics by doing activities that make students think so much that they go home and try it another way to further their learning. After I watched this video, I found myself watching video after video and being inspired by each and every speaker. This website is great for me to utilize right now and in the future. If I teach middle school students, showing students a few of these Ted Talk videos may be very effective as well.

As I went through this project and semester, I took my first map and made it more complex and furthered my thinking by adding more to it because my personal learning network grew so much throughout the semester. Click here to check out my new map by using Popplet!

One-to-One Laptops in Schools

    My freshman year of high school, my school decided to try out the one-to-one laptop for the high school students. This is where each high school student received their own MacBook laptop to use for the year. We were allowed to bring them home and pretty much do whatever we wanted with them. At first, there wasn't any restrictions on websites, so, many students used their laptops to watch Netflix or play games and that became an immediate issue. Over the years, the school learned how to control students using their laptop for websites that weren't educational.
 
    Overall, my experience with the one-to-one laptop initiative was very good. Thankfully, my school spent the money and bought nice, up to date laptops for us, so, they were were fast and useful in the classrooms. It was very helpful to have in the classroom because some of the teachers decided to use eBooks instead of having textbooks in the classroom. Most teachers were open to using more technology in their classrooms, but a few refused to let students even have their laptops out during their class. The school did a great job of encouraging teachers to try to incorporate technology in their classrooms, but some of them were stuck in their old ways of teaching, which is fine, but trying something new sometimes has great benefits!

Although my only experience with one-to-one laptops is with high school students, this is a video of a fifth grade classroom using them. Hopefully, when I become a teacher one-to-one laptops will be available to my students because technology is an important part of a classroom.

First Blog!

November 4, 2016

First blog! Can't wait to start blogging about teaching and my journey to become a teacher education graduate from UNI.