Standard+3

** __Enhancing Core Teaching Skills with Technology__ **

#3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
=== Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. Teachers: ===
 * demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations
 * collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation
 * communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats
 * model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning

My artifacts demonstrating this standard (What?)
//1.// This wiki, A Thousand Flat World Tales, brings students from around the globe together and gives them the opportunity to write short stories and share them with other students.

2. This wiki, A Broken World, takes information that the students have gathered about history from WWI to the Cold War and posts it on a wiki. It is supposed to be used as their textbook. What a great learning experience for students! It is mind boggling the kinds of things that the students could have come up with when they have the ownership of studying and creating their own online textbook.

3. Bookleads is a wiki where students bring together web sites to give other students information about books and suggestions for reading. I have actually used this wiki since I have found it. I especially like the links to the ebooks.

4. Following is a reflection of project-based learning in my classroom.

I have learned a lot over the pass year and a half about project-based learning. It is a difficult concept for me to wrap my mind around. I just know I do not do anything that is what they describe. I really like to do projects with my students, but they are always the assessment at the end of the a unit. For example, two of my seventh grade classes wrote skits for a short story they read and then filmed them. It was a fun project that utilized technology, but it was not a learning based project... I see that students would really learn a lot from a project that they were trying to learn from...the downside...I just wouldn't know where to begin as a teacher. Also, the students would really need to be independent. I know that they would need some basics before we began - students always do need to start with the basics. I think with independent reading I could start using project based learning. I could have the students share information about books using Web 2.0 tools like glogs and prezis. Students could also collaborate using a wiki or even gaggle email and email glogs. I have no idea what I would do...or what I could do at this time. I am sure that there is something I could do with my Young Adult Literature class. With technology, I always like to start small and then go from there.

5. Here is a link to a mind map.

Critical Thinking Mind Map

6. Here is my social bookmarking teaching web site list.

[|Teaching Websites]

7. This is a link to my Searching Document.

8. Setting my goal of having a wiki as a portal for all of my classes is an example of modeling digital age work and learning.

9. My students did a book project using glogster. The requirement sheet for that glog was a glog.

10. My students did a final short story project using glogster. The requirement sheet for that glog was a glog.

11. My students did //A Wrinkle in Time// project using prezi. The requirement sheet for that prezi was a prezi.

12. Here is a link to my easy bib: **http://easybib.com/key/458a86**.

13. I added a Creative Commons license to the wiki: media type="custom" key="7473919"

14. Below is my post for global learning communities.

So I created a twitter account. I have not done the Ning yet. But seeing as how I have been facebooking for a while now, I thought it might be time to see what Twitter has for me. So I have been looking at the people I have followed...a number of education groups and a couple of tequila groups...and I can see where this could be fun...especially for the fame monsters. However, honestly, I have enough to do and checking a twitter account is not going to be prioritized as of yet. For all the information I could get from these groups, it is all already there, at the tip of my fingers on the internet. However, I could definetly see the use of a learning community in a classroom. I talked to Aaron ealier this year about it, and he had some great ideas on how to use twitter in the classroom. You could use it for back channeling during a class discussion. You could use it as a type of classroom book share. Now that is an idea. Set up a reading community where students post thoughts and ideas about books. I like it! Collaborating and communicating...that seems to me what Web 2.0 is all about...plus really cool projects.

15. Below is the post for a Web 2.0 tool forum post.

First...the disappointment. For the past few years my students have been reading an essay called "Names/Nombres" by Julia Alveres. It is about all the names she had growing up and living in two cultures. So, as an activity, I have the students draw a self portrait and write all their names around the portrait to share something about their names. I remember, during our common inservice at Bradford, that the presenter (Mary Heidi Jacobs Mary Something) kept telling us to replace assessments - which has been one of my main focuses while looking for Web 2.0 tools. I have been trying to replace. So, the other day, while looking through the tools, I found Artpad. It was darn cool. You draw on a canvas, like Paint, and then you can save it and get a URL. I was excited. I was going to use this to replace. Well, unfortunately, the flash players on our computer would not load the canvas that I linked and of course, the site was blocked on the school's computer. That was the disappointment. However, I also looked at Vokis. I created one for an introduction to my ectstt and my class wiki. To look at them you can access my ectstt wiki or my class wiki. These were fun to make and now I am just trying to figure out what project my students will do in order to use these....

16. For my innovative project, my tenth grade students are going to create a poetry glog that they are going to update all year long. They are going to write poetry, using the various literary devices required by the state of PA for PSSAs, and embed their glog on a wiki. That wiki will be a collaborative wiki with a group of fourth graders in Susquenida school district. They will also create poetry glogs and embed them on the wiki. Then, using the discussion tab on the wiki page, the students will respond to each other's glogs.

17. For my authentic assessment, my students going to use zoho writer, an online writing tool, to plan, draft, revise and complete an expository essay. To make it authentic, the essay is taken from the yearly Olive Garden Pasta Tales writing contest. Once they have completed the essay, the students who bring back permission slips, will submit their essay to the writing test. Here is my prezi that explains the requirements to the students.

My Reflection on meeting this standard (So What?) //These artifacts represent this standard because as I have continued to create activities for students, they have seen me create projects as well. I have starting using and embedding glogs and prezis into my wikis that give the students information about their projects. Instead of typing a handout and giving it to the students, I put it in a web 2.0 tool, embed it on the wiki, and direct my students to that. I model digital work for my students.//

My Future Learning Goals related to this standard (Now What?)
//I want to continue to utilize all of the tools for my students. I want to continue to work with these tools that will help motivate my students to become better learners and more proficient users of the English and Digital languages.//