Technology is the Future (Class Reflection)

As I sit here, at Barnes and Noble, sipping my caramel machiatto at 10:30am on a Sunday morning, I am realizing just how effective and "instruction" changing this course has been for me. Although I have taken technology courses before, I've never seen such success with technology within my classroom before this course. My literacy project blog and my Read180 digital story were possibly two of the top highlights within my classroom throughout the entire year. I also have no doubts that the Web 2.0/ Webquest will be the third.    Through this course, I have developed many useful skills and time savers related to technology. I will definitely be using Evernote in the future, along with Google Docs, Google Sites, and Blogger. I think the most important concept I realized in this course was that in order to use technology, you need to be engulfed in it constantly. In the last class I took with Arzt, I had no real application of it due to in being in the summer. My goal for this summer is to keep blogging and researching technological tools for the classroom. Practice makes perfect right? 

Literacy Project Literally Worked!

As I've stated in previous blogs, I used a classroom blog for my literacy project. In January the administration staff at my school asked me if I would take some of the lowest performing, behavior prone students into a group to work on their reading comprehension skills before CMTs. They basically gave me free rein of what I was to do, so I decided to switch things up and create a novel group where the majority of the discussion was online. Students would respond to comprehension questions online and also get a chance to view others' responses, which I found to be very rewarding for the students. I have to admit, this group was EXTREMELY successful! Especially for the student population involved. They gave their best effort daily, and even had some students released from discipline in the office in order to participate in the group! Honestly couldn't have been more happy with the results of this group! :)