*Adam+Smith

Adam Smith Frederick High School Frederick County Maryland

10-11 World History

I have been teaching world history, both standard level and AP level for seven years. I consider myself fairly tech savvy on most things, but I feel I can improve on how I use technology in my classroom.

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 * Reflection 7/9**

Zest for Tech conference started today. I found the opening speeches very inspirational, as well as spot on as to the importance of technology and the need for conferences like this to help keep up with the changing pace of technology. With the first speakers, I was already getting ideas to use in my classroom. I don't know if I'll actually try some of these things out in my own classroom, or if I'll find something else as the week goes on, but it's a good feeling to know that the conference is already helping me come up with ideas. Dianne Coyle made some good points about teaching students about good net etiquette and the dangers of some social networking sites, but also encouraging us not to be afraid to use social networking even knowing some of the dangers. Many of the other websites Ms. Coyle showed us could be useful in every classroom, but trying to apply everything could get a little overwhelming. Jason Huber showed us My Big Campus, which I'm not sure my district has access to, but is similar enough to a program I do have access to (Edmodo) that many of the ideas I got while watching the presentation I could apply anyway. I created a wikispaces project while in the hands on portion of the day that I'm going to use next year. In fact I may start using wikispaces for a variety of tasks that required lots of paper, since many of the students in my class have internet access (smartphone or computer at home).


 * Reflection 7/10**

This was another day of flowing ideas and a scramble to try to get all my ideas written down so I don't lose them. Dr. Lerman's presentation reinforced some opinions I've had regarding technology and it's importance in giving a person a chance to be successful. Since we're preparing students for success in the real world, we need to make sure they're at least competent in the tools needed to be a success. I'd love to be able to go paperless in my class like Stephen Schawalder. The technology to do so looks so easy to use, the only restriction I see would be having enough access to computers that I could use it every day. I don't think I'll be posting many videos of myself on YouTube, mainly because I'm not sure if America's ready for me to go viral. But knowing how to embed videos in a wikispaces page will definitely help with the project idea I had yesterday. The presentation on Google docs by Chuck Trautwein was probably the most practical one I had today. I've always wrestled with how to get all the students in a group to work together at the same time, instead of having one person doing all the computer work and the other members just sitting back passively. Google docs seems to be the answer. It would also eliminate the problem I've run into, where students don't have a compatible word processor at home from what they used in school, or when we present projects I have to deal with flash drives, emailed projects, etc. that take up presentation time. Google docs would streamline that whole process and give students a way to work on their projects or assignments anywhere at any time


 * Reflection 7/11**

Most productive day so far! While I have received training on Edmodo before, I wasn't aware just how much you could do with the site! I've already found a ton of resources for my AP class and a huge community of AP teachers I can ask questions of, as well as a step towards making my class as paperless as possible. Our speaker, Eddie Hampton made a good point about learning any new technology: it can get overwhelming if you try to learn everything the technology can do all at once. It was heartening to know he started with just one or two features in Edmodo and built on that over the years until he got to the level of proficiency he has now. Dr. Rankin's presentation was helpful and fun. I've already tried out the sand art website just to get myself in a good Zen state before trying to do my reflection. The scavenger hunt program looked like a lot of fun to do, and gave me an idea for a fun activity for my students after they take the AP exam in May. While Frederick County uses Promethean boards in their classrooms, I've been trying to get SMART boards in my class. I may have to resort to a Kickstarter fundraiser or something. I like the SMART technology much better than the Promethean, it's easier to use and the presentations by Jason Huber and Tara Mattingly reinforced that for me.


 * Reflection 7/12**

Good discussion in the morning. I'll have to remember to tell my colleagues who are a little tech resistant about the discussion we had. Keeping in mind that trying to absorb technology all at once is a sure way to overload and frustrate yourself, and it's so much better to take small bits of information at a time and build yourself up to proficiency. Many of the teachers I work with treat technology as a necessary evil, and if they can get away with not using it, they will. I think this does a disservice to their teaching. With so many technologies out there designed to streamline teaching and to take the administrative busy work out of the job so that teachers can concentrate more on teaching, it's foolish to ignore the technology at your fingertips. The afternoon session was very informative, and I never realized how much I wanted an iPad until I saw how much you could do with the device besides playing games and surfing the web. I think I would've gotten more out of the presentations if I knew more specifically what grade level the presenters dealt with, but overall I got a wealth of information about using the iPad that I didn't realize was there before. Joanna Nieves' presentation with the Kindle Touch was particularly interesting. I own a Kindle Touch and enjoy using it for personal reading, but the idea of using an eReader device that could contain a student's entire class load of textbooks and readings was great. I have students that constantly complain about back pain from lugging around multiple heavy texts, as well as the cost of having to replace expensive texts when they get lost, or damaged. A single Kindle Touch costs less than one World History text. Multiply that savings over the 8 classes a student takes in a year, and the fact that you don't need to purchase as many licenses for the texts as you would individual textbooks and the savings to a county could be enormous.


 * Reflection 7/13**

A great start to the last day of Zest for Tech. Nick Glass and Theresa Norris focused on ways to use technology to get students to connect to reading in more meaningful ways. I really liked the idea of being able to listen to interviews with authors about their books. It sounds like a great way to get students more interested in the books they are reading in class. In the afternoon I decided to get more information about how to use Edmodo. I set up groups for all my classes next year and also joined a few history groups so I can begin networking with some other teachers. I'm going to discuss using Edmodo with the other members of my department, as I think it would be a great way to share resources and lessons with the whole department. I've set up a wikispaces site for my AP history class, and I plan to use it as a review activity. Students will work in pairs to create review packets, post them to the wikispaces and give the whole class a review that they can access and study any time any where.

Where am I going with all this information I've learned? Hopefully I can increase the amount of technology used at my school. If I learned one thing this week, it was not to let the tech overwhelm you. I plan on starting small and building on my technology use, and I hope I can encourage my colleagues to do the same. There were a great many things I learned this week and if I can incorporate even a small part of what I learned I know I can better serve my students and make my own job easier and more enjoyable.