I am a third of the way through the 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator: Technology Every Educator Should Know course through Kent ISD. It is time to reflect on how I might use the tools that I have learned so far before going too much farther.
First of all, it is misleading to thing that I have only learned seven things so far! Each thing is a category related to technology and I have learned many,many technology "things" within each category One of the first things I can say is that I plan to recommend this course to the staff that I supervise. I can see many things that teachers of students with autism, teachers of students with moderate cognitive impairment as well as OTs and PTs can learn and use from this course. One of the ways I will begin to do that is to share this blog with them.
Thing number one was "About Basics" where I learned about MS Office Keyboard shortcuts and Delicious. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano that fit with these tools are summarizing and note taking, objectives and feedback, and questions, cues and advanced organizers. The shortcuts are now posted by my keyboard. Delicious is a good resource to store sources I want to go back and find and share with staff.
Thing number two was "Collaboration Tools" where I learned about Google Docs. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano that fit with these tools are summarizing and notetaking, and cooperative learning. I am looking forward to using this to collaborate with others instead of being limited to those people on my shared drive.
Thing number three was "Communication" where I learned BackChannel chat and Skype. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano that fit with these tools are identifying similarities and differences, effort and recognition, objectives and feedback, summarizing and note taking. I am going to look for BackChannel at the next conference I attend. My only previous use of Skype was communication with distant relatives. I am looking forward to finding ways to collaborate with far flung colleagues using this.
Thing number four was "Content Area Tools" where I learned Thinkfinity. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano that fit with these tools are generating and testing hypothesis, questions, cues, and advanced organizers. This is definitely a website I will be sharing with teaching staff as well as using at home.
Thing number five was "Differentiated Instruction and Diverse Learning" where I learned Learnport, Nettrekker, UDL Strategies, and Vozme. A relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marznano is non-linguistic representations. We already use Nettrakker in GRPS but it is something people are just learning to use. The resources related to UDL are timely and proving useful as we learn to differentiate our new Unique Learning Systems curriculum.
Thing number six was"Digital Citizenship" where I learned about, Digital Citizenship, Acceptable Use, Critical Evaluation, Bogus/Hoax sites and CyberSafety. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano are objectives and feedback, and generating and testing hypothesis. I actually learned some things about this area I didn't know. I am using the quiz to educate staff I supervise to make sure they know this information.
Thing number seven was "Face of the Classroom" where I learned Weebly. Relevant effective teaching strategies identified by Marzano objectives are summarizing and note taking, homework and practice, non-linguistic representations, setting objectives and providing feedback. I need to work more on my website but was excited to learn that I could make one myself. I think I have staff who may like to do this and plan to share it with them.
So far I have to say that I have learned more than I bargained for! It is hard to figure some of these things out since it doesn't come "naturally" to me but the more I "play" with things, the more familiar I am becoming with tools. This is meeting my personal goal to become more familiar with technology that I can use are well as learning what my staff need to know about.
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