Personalizing Learning

Edutopia gives a list of ten ways to personalize learning for students using technology. I think this is one of the big strengths of technology- to be able to tailor the lessons and the work o each student using thing that will grab them and help them immerse themselves in the lesson. Reading and writing about things like these strategies helps me become more excited about diving back into another school year. I hope I'm able to find a place to each next year so I don't miss out on using so many of the new strategies we found out about during this class!

ISTE

I have been reading a ton of stuff about the ISTE conference in San Diego this year. It sounds like it would be an awesome conference to attend. ISTE is the international society for technology education. I am laid off this year so I'm obviously not flying to San Diego to attend this conference but I think it would be awesome to try to attend in the future. I think gathering to see what so many other educators had to say would be a great way to expend your teaching strategies. I am making it a goal of mine to attend a tech conference next year locally. I know that I will see when they come up by watching the nerdy teacher on twitter.

Best Teacher Practice

The Nerdy Teacher wrote a blog entry about best teacher practices and how he thinks that there is really no such thing as one best practice because so much depends on the way the students in your own classroom learn. I think this makes a lot of sense. Why would someone who works with students totally different than mine know better than I do about how to teach them? I think it makes a lot of sense that we have to do what we know to be best for our own students.

Teacher's are Too Big to Fail?

In the nerdy teachers recent blog entry "Too Big to Fail" he asks the question of whether teachers are too big to fail. If it's possible for us to continue to try new things and do things that might now work out the first time in order to improve our overall skills as a teacher for the benefit of future students. This reminds me of all the issues going on with our schools now and it probably hit home because I found out yesterday that my school will be closing next year. I don't know what my alternative students will do now that their school is slipping away. It makes me sad to think about them not having a place of their own next year. For that matter I don't know where I will be next year. I guess when I read that blog entry title it made me think immediately that apparently schools aren't too big to fail because they are falling down all over the place.

The Un-Grade

The blog entry "Not Grading is Awful" was an interesting read. The teacher was talking about her class and how much more work it was to not use traditional grades. She was talking about having to struggle to assign grades to students who were in a constant revision of their work in order to improve upon it. That doesn't fit well into a world where every single thing the students do has to be documented and evaluated and then input into a gradebook. I think it's very brave of her to launch off onto this quest to try something new, different, and probably difficult.

Blogging Isn't Necessary

In the educationrethink article "It's OK if Teachers Don't Blog" the author talked about how he didn't feel like it was required for teachers to use blogging websites. He made the point that we would not expect every teacher to use the same thing or software and what works for some might not work for others, so why should we be shoving all teachers into the blog world if that's not what they're into. We should allow teachers to express themselves in the way they are most comfortable! This makes a lot of sense. We differentiate for students all the time. Why shouldn't we differentiate for our teachers?

The Best Peeps on Pinterest

The readwriteweb article about the top twenty Pinterest personalities was cool. I was able to find a few people to follow who look like they will be sweet. I have found that I am really interested in Pinterest lately. I have been able to find a lot of great ideas for food to make and have actually made it and loved it! I am also using it to find neat things for my daughter’s birthday which is coming up soon. I think things like Pinterest are great ways to include technology in your everyday life. I am interested to see how it evolves and to find if there is a way to use it in my classroom!