This was the first of two workshops that I had to make-up due to illness. It was a different experience–I caught myself wanted to type in a question or leave a comment but had to remind myself this was just a recording.

 

The presentation was in a Google Slide with useful links and pauses for discussion. There was a lot of time dedicated to introductions and posting a strength and a weakness with regards to technology use. This was all located on this presentation.

This a good, quick reflection on my current state with regards to technology in the classroom. I am loving the Checking for Understanding power it has unleashed in my classroom. I am NOT loving having thirty-one iPad 2’s that need updating: both iOS and app updates. I have found that without the ability to do updates myself this opens the door for weird glitches, bugs, and outright unusable sites/apps at times. Of course, one student can’t report it, they all have to report it and repeat what their classmates just said. I need to take some deep breaths just thinking about it. I would really like either of the two solutions: I am granted the power to load and update apps on my classroom devices OR our one-man IT team gets some help.

Just this past Friday in my class–I had a beautiful digital copy of our unit 2 math assessment loaded in Formative with helpful YouTube links, well for whatever reason the kids could not upload the pictures of their work and after 15-20 minutes of both myself and the kids trying to look for fixes, I called a “Code Paper”–something I made-up on the fly, and told them to all complete the paper assessment and forget the tech for today.

 

The presentation was big on going through the SAMR model. I have learned about this multiple times in the past, but it is always good to get a refresh on the material. We watched a first grade science lesson and then shared out what we saw. The technology allowed the students to document their learning much easier than with pencil and paper–utilizing the tablet’s camera, they used many different apps to show understanding, and they looked happy and engaged.

A couple of big takeaways from this workshop:

1. Andy shared a story of a teacher using the app ShowMe. The teacher gave each of her 5th-graders a long division problem to solve. They had to use the whiteboard app and record their thinking out loud as they solved it. *AWESOME! I want to do this with my students immediately. This would be a great artifact to upload to their ePortfolios and then I can share with parents during conference time.
2. You DO NOT have to hang out in Redefinition on the SAMR scale. This isn’t realistic, nor is it beneficial. Don’t forget the tried and true basics of your pedagogy. This picture sums it up:

Overall, a useful presentation that was well-worth my time.