Common Core

Common Core is coming whether teachers like it or not. My personal opinion is I am fine with implementing the new standards. Many of the standards are much like the current Illinois State Standards. As a high school special education teacher I am hoping the new assessments will be more accommodating to students with special needs or even those students who are the vocational track. Currently students in Illinois are taking the ACT for their assessment and the test is written for student who are college bound. My other hope is that when media is comparing states on whether they are meeting the standards we will all be on an even playing field. Much of the media continues to report on how poor Illinois school are doing compared to Iowa schools, the problem is many parents are not aware of the major differences in the testing tools being use. I feel there is still a lot of unknowns relate to the common core but once teachers feel more informed they will jump right on board.

Google!!

I am very excited that when I leave this class I will finally have everything available wherever I go.  Last night I was able to show everyone everything I was working on through my iPad!!  I have taking many classes previous and I end up having projects saved to cds, flashdrives, emails, and actually copies of the projects.  The problem was I was not sure where they were saved and the computers at school did not support the software that some of the projects where saved in.  Again I hope with the 1-1 initiative that all of this will be available not only to me but my students!!

Symbaloo

I really love this website and I think it will be great for my high school students to  use.  I just need to remind myself to use it.  I still find myself  opening up a new browser and typing in the long websites :)

Flipping the Classroom

I am not sure how I feel about flipping the classroom.  I do know with the new common core standards that are coming out that "flipping" is going to be a big push for all teachers.  With the new evaluation tools going into effect it will now be required that our classrooms are student lead not teacher lead.  I feel this could be a great concept and will allow students to receive extra help in a class they may be struggling in.  The biggest problem I see is that this will only work if the students are self-driven.  The students that are currently doing their homework will be the same students who go home and watch the videos this will give them an advantage in the classroom over the other students who have not seen the video.  So how do you go about class when some students have not seen the video of the material being covered in class.  The other problem is technology needs to be available to all students at school and at home in order for this concept to work.

NETS

After looking through the NETS standards I am getting even more excited for the 1-1 initiative.  I feel with out a student having their own computer it could be very difficult for students to meet the NETS standards.  I have found that when students have to do a project on the computer they usually have to work in a group and one student usually ends up navigating the computer.  As for the teacher standards I believe it will take a lot of work to prepare lessons.  There will also be a lot of trial and error on what lessons will work in the  classroom.  As a special education teacher my job is to prepare most of my students to enter the workforce after high school and provide them with skills to live on there own.  With much of the workforce requiring the use of technology I feel this will give them the upper hand over other students who have not hand the opportunity of using a computer 4 years in high school.

LMS

I would agree with much of the article "K-12 Student Data and Learning Management Systems Miss the Mark".  There is always pro's and con's to using technology.  As a special education teacher we are currently using skyward and I feel this has been a great SIS tool.  This is only our second year using this system.  I would like to see more parents getting involved with the use of this program.  Last year we had about 50 students with IEP's and only 4 parents ever checked the grades of their students from home. I would love to be able to start using a LMS system but as the reading states it can be difficult when a large number of your students do not have regular access to the internet.  I feel I may start to use a LMS system once all students have their own computers.  I have many students who have a hard time navigating through Powerpoint and Microsoft Word so until they can get comfortable with the basics of the computer, trying to use a LMS program in 45 minutes could be very difficult.

I am currently taking a class and I am learning about blogs!