Standard 6.4

Pinterest - History/EDUC 3040



6.4    Candidates use technology in their own learning process and to change their current educational practice.

This can be a tricky standard in my mind. Technology can be a great thing for us to implement as a way to further the education process and to include and motivate our students, but it can be challenging to determine which are the best technologies to incorporate and which ones are more trouble than they are worth. This standard, to me at least, means that it is important for me to find the technologies that help me to learn better, the ones that help me to be a better educator and the ones that will assist my students the best in learning what it is that I'm offering them. No mean feat especially when you consider a 10th grader in a history class. First, trying to get a teenager interested in history can be a challenge in and of itself, much less if you have a student who is up to date on all the current technology trends and hides their eye rolls every time you mention a musket or a butter churn.

I think videos can be exceptionally useful in that they can be used to not only introduce yourself to your class, but potentially have your class use a camcorder to create their own lessons. For instance, I think it would be wonderful to utilize a camera in my classroom and perhaps stage a reenactment of the Battle of Bunker Hill on the football field of my school. My students would help plan out the battle and who would be in charge of directing, etc., and then we could shoot the whole sequence and it could be used to teach younger students or classes in latter years. All of which would give my students a hands of type of approach to their country's history and allow them to engage in using some of the fun gadgets that are out there for them.

Pinterest, well, I'm a huge fan of Pinterest. I find it similar to an online scrapbook of ideas for things I want to try. It's so much simpler than bookmarking hundreds of webpages and then trying to remember from the title of the bookmark (or the link) exactly what it was that you were trying to get out of that bookmark. Pinterest would make a great collaborative effort between classes. Students could create a Pinterest board out of things they would like to possibly learn about later in the year (as long as it pertains to history!) and as the teacher, I could then keep up to date on what they've found. This would also serve as a type of archive for subsequent school years. They would have the chance to create their own boards and to peruse the boards of previous classes so that they could see how things have changed in regards to the information available or what interests them as a class. It would also allow students the chance to see if there are students from previous years with similar interests. It's never too early to start networking.

Twitter, well, to be honest Twitter seems to me to be something that I don't think I will use very much. I can just as easily set up a facebook page, or schoology site, etc., that would allow me to post short messages to my students. The good thing I can see from Twitter is that it allows you to keep up with what is currently going on. In that regard, I would consider it a potential for maintaining awareness of the bare bones of current events (be they important or minute) in the interest of deciding what they want to find more information on.
Revolutionize Textbooks - this particular item was tweeted by NIcole Fordham (@nicolemarie0319) back in February, and I retweeted it because I felt it was pertinent to our class in particular. We don't use a textbook in this class, but just about every other class does and while many teachers are still hesitant to digitilize, most students are jumping on the wagon faster than the wagon can move.
Discover Tech for Teachers - I retweeted this one as well because I think part of the problem for most teachers is not having a clue about where to go to to find new technologies or to learn how to utilize them. This site helps with that.
I follow CoolCatTeacher currently on Twitter. I believe that she is a Language Arts teacher, however, she has tons of great ideas and her raw enthusiasm for education is infectious!!!
I also follow Education Week on Twitter. Right now the big thing they have is ideas to help combat summer slide!!!
My Twitter screen name is @Jessica44465011.

Truthfully, the biggest concern I have is that I just don't get Twitter. To me it is still confusing and pointless for the most part. On a certain level, I understand that it can be useful which means that the best way for me to combat this problem would be to just make myself use it a little bit everyday until I'm comfortable enough with it to understand it. My other concern would be how to keep my students from doing stuff they shouldn't be doing on some of these sites. Pinterest and Twitter are really easy to get caught up in and be doing several different things all at the same time. Should I consider grading my students based on how much time they seem to commit to these or should it be more of a quality not quantity aspect? That being said, how would I be able to determine if the quality is sufficient if they are more familiar with these than myself? I really think the only way to combat these concerns is to continue practice using these technologies.