PLN Journey and Reflection

This semester has been the craziest of my life.  I have taken several steps: Newly engaged, purchased a house, interviewed and accepted a new position, served as an assistant department chair, and led a candidate search and interviews for my current position.  As if all of these things were not enough to cause delays in my full focus on material of this course, it turns out that I purchased a house with many hidden issues.  As we all know, teachers don’t get paid a lot, so I have been forced to fix things on my own, and not very successfully.  I am stilling living out of boxes and with out a working shower.  With all of this, I have become more aware of the power of Professional Learning Networks.  It can be overwhelming for sure, but it is also stable.  You can access as much or as little as you can handle.  The tools we have used are designed to make our lives easier, not more difficult.

Feedly is a awesome tool for anyone who wants to stay in tune with the latest and greatest.  The ability to pull so many resources to one central location saves me so much valuable time.  It is something that I will definitely continue to use.

I have tried blogging before and again in this course.  It is something that I enjoy from time to time, but have difficulty keeping them up to date.  As a math person, writing has never been one of my strong suits, however put to paper my thoughts help me to reflect on what I have learned, read, or experienced.  It is a very powerful tool even if others do not interact with you. Blogging in the classrooms is a great why for students to work on their writing and peer editing.  I wish the English teachers at my school had our students blog more. I have been trying to come up with a way to use it in my math classes.

I enjoy listening to podcasts but not making them myself.  There is nothing better than being able to be productive in the care while you are driving.   I go through periods of time in which I enjoy reading and others in which I have a hard time.  Podcasts are a great way for me to continue to hear others thoughts or discussions on topics.

I have had a twitter for years and have only posted a few times.  I have never gotten into posting the things I do to the world.  I do use twitter however to follow a group of visionary math teachers under the name of twittermathcamp.  I will continue to use this and I see it playing a bigger and bigger role in schools with the ability to easily distribute information to students, communities, and parents.

I have been exposed to Delicious before and have never really gotten into Social Bookmarking.  I am sure some have found great use out of it, but not me.

Diigo is a tool that I have heard about before but never really looked into. I shared it with a history teacher at my school and he is in love with the collaborative annotating that can take place.  He is using it with his students as they work on research papers.  

Although I have had a lot going on, the information in this course was very helpful and I wish that I would have been able to take full advantage of the course.  It has opened new doors for me in extending my own learning and professional development.  I really enjoyed working with the other students in this course.  I feel that I am better off. 

Google Tools

I began working with a group of teachers on a collaborative project using virtual meeting place and tools.  We initially communicated using Gmail and  the g-chat function associated with it.  When we began to brainstorm about survey questions for our project I suggested we start a Google doc.  I assumed at this point almost all teachers or professionals have used a Google doc at least once.   To my surprise this was their first time using one for collaborative purposes.  I found it humorous that they would stop typing when they saw someone else beginning to type, as if we were really having a conversation and they didn’t want to interrupt.  They quickly became acclimated with the new etiquette and we really made some progress.  The ability to see what others are typing and edit/proofread it immediately saved us a ton of time.  Google has done a great job of creating tools that make it easy for people to collaborate in real time as well as offer other tools that are compatible and user friendly.  Once our questions were created and agreed upon, I recommended we use Google forms as our survey device.  My background in Google tools led me to create the form, however the ease at which I was able to do it, increased the willingness of my group members to try it on their own.  That is what the course is about, professional learning networks.  Learning from others in order to better our selves and our crafts.  It also made me not assume that everyone I work with has the same knowledge of tools and should help them with any tool I am familiar with. 

Excel- I didn't know what I didn't know

I have been away for a while so I am trying to make up for some blog posts.  In the class we were given an Excel task to complete.  I went into the assignment fairly confident in my knowledge and ability in using Excel.  As a math teacher I was comfortable in creating formulas and created charts and graphs.  In a previous course I was introduced to some filter and sorting functions that I have never used before.  This assignment introduced me to so much more.  I thought that I was good but felt challenged by some of the tasks like the pivot table.  I had never used one before but was able to work my way through it.   Excel is such a useful tool for so many things, but is not introduced to our students enough.  There are so many jobs in which fluency in Excel is important.  The more students are comfortable with it the more they will and may have to use it.   Sometimes it is necessary to find out things that you didn’t know you didn’t know.  Anybody used Excel for any cool projects in your classes?

Interview

This week I was asked to interview for a math position in the High school.  The interview was Friday.  As I began the meeting with the High School principal he asked me what my ideal role would be in the high school.  I expressed my interest in working with the faculty to incorporate effective technology into their lessons.  As our discussion continued he asked me a question that I had never thought about and it caught me off guard.  “How much of your curriculum is spend on information that students don’t need to retain? With all of the technology around our students today and how quickly they can access the information, how important is the retention of certain information?”  I think this is a wonderful question.  I began to think about the curriculum and how many equations and formulas I try to get the students to memorize and how much time I spend on getting them to practice them.  If I took that time and gave in to allow the students to “look it up” not in the book but using technology; I could focus more on teaching the students how to use the information and apply it to solve problems.  Would this not cut down on the amount of material and increase the time we could use to master the application of it.  I told him we would have to change a lot about the structure of education and make a lot of teachers uneasy.  Teachers like to teach the way they were taught, even if the students they are teaching are not going up in the same world.  Our conversation was wonderful and he shared several articles using Evernote that he has been collecting and some discussion he has been having with a few of the upper school faculty on the subject.  This was my first time using Evernote which seems like a really cool way to share information and articles.   This has gotten me extremely interested in the direction of our school.

Podcast

I was unable to create a podcast due to issues in personal life.

Globalliance Simulation

This week the students at my school took part in a competitive simulation in which students used technology and collaboration to find solutions to real world problems.  A colleague and I have worked for over a year on developing a “game” for every student in our middle school (353) to “play.”  The idea of the game was to have students learn about other countries and current issues involving different regions of the world.  Our students took on the task with a lot of enthusiasm and determination.  The students had to use their laptops to research characteristics of countries, perform group challenges and then create and present a formal presentation to the “World Council”  (Model UN students in our High school).   Although we were interrupted by some snow days, the students did incredible.  If you have a few minutes, please take a look at the video that the school had made from the experience.

http://www.dgchallenges.com/globalliance-video.html