PLN: Pinterest

Hi everyone!

 I would be considered a Stage 1: Lurker when it comes to Pinterest. I have had an account for a while (two accounts actually as I just discovered...I forgot I made one years ago in college). When planning my wedding, I definitely used this social media site to get centerpiece and dress ideas. I enjoyed looking at all the pictures. I also came upon this site when doing Google searches for my classroom, and I found some neat ideas over the years. Nevertheless, I never spent much time really using the site---I never really organized pins, pinned things in general, or followed anyone.  I spent more time on it today and came across some neat classroom management ideas.

Personal Image

 I made a whole new board and called it classroom management ideas. I was inspired to create this board by coming across this pin above about blurt beans. The title Chatty class? definitely caught my attention! I have such a chatty class this year and after coming home today on a Friday, I am willing to try anything to help limit the talking in my classroom. Upon clicking on this pin, I went to a website called Miss Giraffe's class. This page contains a slew of strategies to curb or stop talking among the students. Some of these ideas such as "blurt cubes" and "the marshmallow trick" are clever ones to manage talking in the classroom. After spending time on this site, I started pinning other classroom management and organization ideas on this board. I have a nice collection so far!

I love making lists. I have Post-It notes all over my desk. Pinterest is essentially just that but on the computer. The site is actually really up my alley so I am not really sure why I have shied away from using it. Something about it overwhelmed me and that caused me to not fully pay attention to it. By spending more time pinning and gaining followers, I can venture into the higher stages of connectedness when using a PLN (Professional Learning Network) like Pinterest. 

I most identify with the cognitive benefits of using a PLN. I like gaining creative ideas from other educators to help meet needs or solve problems in my classroom. While I use TpT a lot to gather resources for the classroom, I have recently found Twitter to be very helpful in order to learn new ideas from teachers. I shared my classroom management board on Twitter to see if anyone may be inspired and/or share more tips with me. After exploring Pinterest more, I need to use this social media site to help myself stay connected with other teachers so that I am not sitting in isolation with my classroom problems.

Let's hope these blurt beans work so I can stop all the chatterboxes in my room....

EDU 790 Introduction

Hi everyone! I'm Laura Walls. I love taking pictures, so I couldn't just share one. Below are four of my favorite current photos: 

Personal Photo

The past two and a half years have been very eventful in my life, especially since I got married in 2016! The picture at the top is my current profile picture on my Facebook account. It's one of my favorite pictures from my wedding. My husband (Nick) and I got married at St. Francis Xavier Church in LaGrange. I am a 6th-grade teacher at the parish's school. Since I have shared this picture before for other courses, I decided to share some other recent pictures that are also on my Facebook. I can't seem to get myself to change my profile picture! 

Personal Photo

 
This picture above is from my honeymoon. Nick and I love Disney World and had a great time when we went. I am actually going back soon with some of my close girlfriends for a long weekend. I can't wait!

Personal Photo

This third picture shows Nick and I at a wedding over the summer. Nick was the best man at his best friend's wedding. I tagged along with the bridal party when they took pictures at Dominican. I didn't know at the time that I would shortly be starting classes there!

Personal Photo

As for this last picture, it shows Nick and I on the day we purchased our first house. Over the past few months, we have worked hard at making our place feel like home. We love to decorate and went a little crazy with Christmas. We are currently getting some work done with our basement, and most our Christmas stuff is still up. I'll admit that I'm a little nervous about when I'm going to have the time to put it all away! As much as I love it all, I am looking forward to getting my house back to normal and all clean!

 Looking through these pictures just now on Facebook has made me reflect on how busy/eventful life has been lately. It's kind of nice to share these moments on Facebook because in a sense, it's like creating a traditional photo album to remember events and people. I love history and pictures, so storing all these in one location preserves my history with my friends and family and also organizes these images.

I am looking forward to this course. While I tend to be a private person, I feel that I have come along way with being more open to sharing with others via social media. I have definitely benefited from social media as teacher by gaining great ideas and resources from others. I am excited to learn more ways to use social media as an educator.

Check out the following to learn more about me:

Twitter (@lwalls776)

Professional Website

Technology Specialist Proposal Process

       For the past seven and a half weeks, I have gone through a process of determining a need in my classroom and thinking of a way in which technology could provide a solution. I identified several needs in my room. One is to increase student engagement in learning, and another is to provide more opportunities for differentiated instruction. While I strive to achieve these needs in my classroom, I brainstormed ways to utilize technology in order to better meet them. 

       My plan focused on using a HyperDoc, a digital lesson that contains resources related to a certain topic, in order to meet these needs. After establishing this technology solution, I needed to assess the need, research the technology, design the lesson, and receive feedback from a colleague about my plan. I enjoyed the process, especially since I had to break up the proposal into these steps. By doing so, I was better able to really think through the plan to make sure I thought of everything in order to make it a successful solution. Going forward, I will use this same process to implement different technology plans. Furthermore, by breaking up the proposal into these steps, it helped greatly when putting it all together. This was the most positive aspect of the process because it made the final plan clearer and more organized.

       Using a HyperDoc is something that fits well with my philosophy of teaching. I find this tool to be a nice balance between a traditional method of instruction and one that is innovative. I believe this because with a HyperDoc, students are still using resources that involve reading and taking notes about content (traditional method), but because they are on the computer using different tools (innovative method), they tend to be more excited to learn than by simply using paper and pencil. At the same time, by using technology, students have access to many more resources at their fingertips in order to delve deeper into a topic and research answers to their questions. No one HyperDoc has to look the same; there are various technology tools and resources, and this is something that makes them so attractive to me. As I go along and continue to create HyperDocs, I can vary them, and I can see this helping engagement more since students will be exposed to different things each time they use one. I definitely see a HyperDoc as a very student-centered tool since the students are in charge of navigating through the information instead of receiving direct instruction. I can vary the HyperDocs to meet the needs of different learners with different learning styles in my classroom.Creating ways to achieve this differentiation is challenging, but I like that since each student can work independently on their own device, their HyperDoc can be private so that no one will know if people received different or tweaked versions.

       A negative/challenging aspect of the process was deciding which resources to include on the Hyper Doc as there are so many great tools and resources to use. I appreciated the feedback from my technology coach colleague who suggested that I use less to start with. Over the past few months, I have learned about so many useful online tools like Padlet and Thinglink. I think HyperDocs is a great way to use them all. As I look ahead, I am concerned with the fact that HyperDocs can be time-consuming to put together, but I believe that as I get more used to using them in the classroom, designing them will not be so bad. 

        After going through this proposal process, I am excited for the challenge of being a technology specialist. I can see myself being a strong asset  to a school to assist my colleagues with designing lessons using technology. Technology is changing education in positive ways, and I am looking forward to being a part of the journey towards improved instruction and learning for students. While doing so, I will keep the SAMR model in mind in order to be making good choices when choosing which technology to use in a lesson. Overall, I am looking forward to implementing this HyperDocs plan in January. I am confident that this tool will help to meet the needs of my diverse group of learners, and it will increase student engagement.

Reflection on my Learning Specialist/Instructional Designer Proposal

Several challenges that I face in my classroom involve increasing student engagement and providing more differentiation within my instruction. Yes, these are two challenges, and if someone asked me to pick just one, I would have a hard time deciding which one is more important. Therefore, I wanted to find something that would help me to try and achieve both for my students. I know that incorporating something with technology could help, and after learning about and researching HyperDocs, I feel that utilizing these tools in my classroom could be just the thing. 

After assessing my needs in my classroom and thinking of this idea, I have brainstormed questions to ask the technology coordinator at my school to help me with implementing HyperDocs. I feel that I have thought of all possible challenges I may encounter with using these. I have also gathered research to support how these will help with engagement and differentiation in the classroom. I feel that the process has been going well so far. The major challenge that I have encountered is having the time to create this. I want to incorporate links and videos and other tools to make this learning experience meaningful for my students. I also have not had time yet to meet with my technology coordinator to go over this with her. These past two weeks have been extremely busy since report cards and conferences are taking place. I hope that after the holiday, I can meet with her and spend time gathering resources. I also want to tailor some of the HyperDocs for specific students. 

I am excited about implementing a HyperDoc because I feel my students will be more invested in what they are learning. I am fortunate that I am in a 1:1 environment at my school since each of my students have Chromebooks. I therefore feel that these would be a perfect tool to start using in my room to create a more blended-learning environment. I really do not feel anything negative about using these other than I may feel a little odd in the classroom while my students are on these because I am not actively involved in the instruction. However, if I get better with these, I can incorporate features where I can provide feedback directly or ask questions to the students as they are engaged in them. 

While there is so much that I can do with HyperDocs, I do have to step back a bit and think in simple ways by starting off small so as not to overwhelm myself. I know I want to use this for a social studies lesson. After coming up with the lesson objective(s), I will then gather the resources. I think my first HyperDoc will be small, and then I can build from there and make them longer with different tools and features attached. 

I am liking the idea of being a Technology Specialist because I think the next step in my career is to be more involved in instructional design and to find ways to reach students. I feel that I can do this best by not being tied down to just one classroom, but by being involved with multiple classrooms to learn ideas and collaborate with other teachers at a school.

Social Media in the Classroom

Oftentimes when I think of social media, I usually think it's only referring to things like Facebook and Twitter. When I was reading a presentation about social media, I came across the following image. This image stood out to me and made me realize that other tools like Google Docs and Pinterest are also social media. I like how this image grouped these technology tools into different categories. So, the next time I am asked if I am interested in using social media in my classroom, I do not have to limit my thinking into just those two tools.

Social Media Map: Image Source

In order to gain ideas on how to use social media in the classroom, I read the following article entitled 22 Simple Examples of Social Media in the Classroom. On here, I learned the idea of having students create fake Facebook pages about a famous historical figure, and using Pinterest to pin student work to share with parents, etc. In addition to those, a classroom blog can be used in a writing class to have students interact with others, especially their classmates. I like finding resources like this that provide example ideas on ways I can use tools with my students and their families. If I use these tools in my personal life to communicate and collaborate with others, then it makes sense to use them professionally with my colleagues, students, and parents. Since the world is used to these tools, it will probably help them stay organized if all aspects of their life start using them, so all teachers need to start realizing that using these tools more will benefit their school.

I also read another article entitled What Would Abe Lincoln's Social Media Campaign Look Like? A New Classroom Use for Twitter and Facebook. I find it very interesting to look at how social media played a big role in political elections, and how things may have been different if social media was used in the past during Abraham Lincoln's time. This article explained how this topic could be turned into a lesson for students. I found the lesson to be a great idea and it definitely would  allow students to use many different higher-order thinking skills to collaborate and communicate. Within the lesson, students could use other technology tools like Recite to write quotes from historical figures and how those could have been used in a campaign. Awesome way to integrate social media into a lesson! It's something I don't think I would have come up with on my own. One just needs to be social in order to gain great ideas!