NETS-T5 Reflection & Investigation

T5d: Evaluate yourself according to the standards of NETS-T 5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership [d. Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self- renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community].
Self-rated as: Developing

For NETS-T5d, I rated myself as Developing on the basis that I have not had experience in contributing to the teaching profession or a school community. I think that contributing to the teaching profession is a very important aspect of being an educator. Without these contributions, the profession would become stagnant and, I believe, teachers would begin to lose their focus for teaching. 

In Your Experience
I have not given much of my time to philanthropic activities, though I have participated to a certain degree. A couple of years ago, I participated with Habitat for Humanity and we worked to put some final touches on the outside of a family's new home. I have also participated with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) during their holiday event. This holiday celebration was a dinner targeted to low-income and homeless families, many of whom struggle with mental illness in their lives. NAMI provided a Christmas celebration for the children, including a gift tree, and I was part of the kitchen crew. I also worked with Hough Elementary during their Father Christmas event, where students (many who are from low-income families) are able to "shop" through the donated gifts to give to their family members. There have been other opportunities for philanthropy which I have participated in during my life as well. 

These examples of my experience with philanthropy have always reminded me of how important it is to give back. Humans are such social creatures and I really don't believe that we would survive if we couldn't rely on our fellow man. By giving of their time and effort, and perhaps being exposed to a side of life that they may be unfamiliar with, students can learn what it truly means to give. Philanthropic giving (outside of money) is an important experience for children to have, in my opinion. I think that participating in philanthropy creates an attitude shown in the diagram below, for adults and children:

From: http://www.academicimpressions.com/news/student-philanthropy-academic-impressions-model

Section Exploration

From this section, there are many philanthropic opportunities that interest me:

I thought that these organizations, especially, could be introduced in the classroom to students or at a school-wide level, in order to expose students to different forms of philanthropy that don't require you to donate money (for the most part). I think that instilling the idea of kindness philanthropy to students at an early age will help to create responsible, kind community members. 

Random Acts of Kindness provides lesson plans that teachers can use (free membership, all you have to do is register. Available in English and Spanish for K-8) in their classrooms to lead students in developing an understanding of unconditional caring for others. It also provides booklists that can used for student reading and teacher reading. 

Free Rice donates 10 grains of rice for every correct answer from a variety of subject areas, in participation with World Food Programme. Could be used in the classroom to expand vocabulary, grammar, math, even chemical symbols knowledge. Students could also be encouraged to start using it outside of school.

Kind Spring (formerly helpothers.org) encourages performing Random Acts of Kindness to others and to leave "Smile Cards" (which can be downloaded for free on their website in several different languages or designs) that encourage others to do the same in a "Pay It Forward" style.

From: http://www.kindspring.org/smilecards/

Youth Frontiers which provides seminars for students and teaching staff that promote community and character building. Although they are located in the Midwest, they do perform national seminars but there is a cost involved for students or teachers attending. 

I felt that this video illustrates the point of how minor a good deed can seem but that it can make a huge impact...

A film by Life Vest Inside.

Video from KarmaTube

Reflection

Giving back doesn't always have to require a lot of time or money, but it is a skill that not everyone realizes they possess. I think that part of our job as educators is to help children recognize those skills through exposure and modeling. This, along with focusing on our own professional development, is essential in our role as teachers. I believe that Edutopia will be extremely valuable in my career as it provides tools that I will be able to use, ranging from How to Create Social Media Guidelines In Your School to blogs on a variety of topics. I think that as my career progresses, maintaining my professional development will rely more and more on developing it through technology, either by participating in online seminars and trainings to searching for new tools to use in my classroom.

NETS-T4 Reflection & Investigation

T4c: Evaluate yourself according to the standards of NETS-T 4. Promote and
Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility [c. Promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information].
Self-rated as: Developing

From: https://www.facebook.com/grammarly

For the NETS-T4c standard, I rated myself as developing because I believe a multitude of information can be misconstrued when communicating through technology. When I am using email, social networking, or even text message, I am careful about what I write and how I write it because none of these allow your voice to be heard. I can have a generally sarcastic tone in my voice at times and when I am speaking this comes across as good-hearted sarcasm. When I write the same words out in email, text, or via social networking, it can come off as rude, impatient, or mean to someone who doesn't know me and can't read my words and hear my voice behind it. To remedy this, I make sure that when I share my feelings via technology I use proper grammar with the occasional inflection of speaking language (ex. abbreviating "gonna" for "going to", using ellipses "..." when my thought trails off, or preceding a thought with "so..."). This allows my voice to be "heard" through electronic means. I will also use type font that can convey what I am meaning (bolding, italicizing, or capitalizing to get my point across). I try not to "flame" people by yelling at them electronically. Plus, WHO WANTS TO READ SOMETHING THAT IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS? The one time I will never use anything other than proper grammar is when I am writing a professional communication. I would never send an email to a professor or professional contact that includes those reflections of my personal voice because they can visually come off as unprofessional and lazy. Proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar can make a huge impression on the person who is reading what you have written. 

Comic from: http://apalessandri.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/whenenglishteacherssnap1.jpg

In Your Experience

I can't recall a time where I misinterpreted an email message. I do know of several times where text messages do not make sense to me or I misinterpret the message. Just a short example, a good friend and I were discussing some of the different books we like and our conversation looked something like this:

Friend: Have you read It?
Me: What?

Friend: Have you read It before?
Me: Read what before?

Friend: It! Have you read It before?!

Me: I don't know what book you're talking about!

Friend: Lol, It by Stephen King. Have you read IT before?
Me: Haha, no I haven't read It before.

I was so frustrated by not grasping what she was talking about. The vagueness of It (or "it" as I was reading) wasn't letting my brain figure out what she meant. Even though we were discussing books, Stephen King was not part of our conversation at that point so his novel was not my first thought. I kept going through our previous text messages to see what I was missing. My brain didn't register the capital "I".

Section Exploration

I typically use email, Facebook, and now Blogger. I also occasionally comment on news stories. I am very careful with what I put out online and whenever possible, I keep my information and profiles private. Going into teaching I know that students have a tendency to look up their teachers on social networking sites. The last thing I would want is to have them see my profile and think "Oh wow, Mrs. Anderson is really irresponsible." So I make sure my information is locked down and I also make sure what I am putting into the technological sphere doesn't portray me as irresponsible. I take care in disclosing photos and what I write. What I write is a direct reflection of who I am and I do not want that being mistaken for something I am not. I am pleased with my public persona. I keep my information private and when I am not able to keep it private, I keep it professional. When I comment on news stories, I make sure to 1) Use proper grammar, 2) Choose my words carefully, 3) Be sure to sound intelligent and educated - these three are important to how people portray me, as it is who I am as a person.

Reflection

I feel that the two most important outcomes that need to be modeled for students are "Model ethical and legal technology practices" and "Exhibit responsible behavior in social interactions involving technology." Plagiarism and intellectual property theft are two behaviors that can have not only personal effects (such as failing a class) but also legal repercussions if they are discovered. Since the internet is a bottomless pit of information, sometimes what is put out there can be found years later, meaning what you do today may come back to bite you down the road. To model responsibility concerning these behaviors, I would be sure that when I am using documents, photos, or electronic information, I will be sure to find out what the copyright information is and when in doubt, cite where you got it from. Posting online should be considered no different than writing a paper. If there is ever any question of whether or not to cite sources, cite your sources. When it comes to plagiarism, it's always better to be safe than sorry. We need to make sure that our students understand the consequences of their behaviors and that what they put online now might impact their life in the future. 

NETS-T3 Reflection & Investigation

T3b: Evaluate yourself according to the standards of NETS-T 3. Model Digital Age Work and Learning [b. Collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation]
Self-rated as: Basic

For this particular NETS standard, I rated myself as Basic because I do not have the experience of collaborating in order to support student success or innovation. I have collaborated in my own social life and education using digital technology, such as Doodle, Facebook, and Edmodo. I feel that many of the social networking sites are very similar and knowledge in one influences your ability to easily catch onto a new one.

Here is an example of a Doodle poll. It's helpful for scheduling because it tracks the most popular time for meetings and decisions can be made easier with it.

In Your Experience
Collaboration has been a fairly good chunk of my college career. That is something that I was not prepared for from my education. Mostly because every time I was required to participate in a group or partner project, I was the one who completed the majority of the work and ended up frustrated with my "collaborator/s". Unfortunately, that's because most of our educations did not prepare us to work collaboratively. In a collaborative effort, I try to do my part and make sure that a piece of quality work is completed. Outside of school, my collaborative efforts range from coordinating a wedding (on the day of) to organizing a garage sale to being involved in clubs through WSU. I cannot think of additional technology that I would have been able to put to appropriate use in my past collaborative efforts. It's hard to imagine how to change past situations using present technology. I believe that going into teaching, it will be important for me to understand what collaborative tools are available to use. Being in contact with my colleagues, parents of my students, and my students will be important and I know that technology will drive much of this contact. 

Section Exploration
For this section, I chose to explore some new collaborative technologies that I have not heard of before. I believe that when I am teaching, it will be important to give my students and their parents the ability to communicate with me, and at times, it will be necessary to gain information about these families anonymously in order to gain a better snapshot of the social forces at work on my students. It will also help me gain insight from my students about what is working or not working in my classroom without the risk of students feeling exposed in how they feel. I found this tool for creating a survey called SurveyMonkey (.com) and it lets you choose from several pre-made surveys or create your own. There are different levels of membership to the website and depending on what price you are willing to pay, it will let you have access to different features of survey creation. I found a pre-made survey that I believe is an example of something that may be helpful to use in a classroom someday. There are several available and I recommend taking a look at them. SurveyMonkey is definitely a site that I can see myself using in the future.

Here is the survey I found that solicits feedback from parents about what kind of learning support their children receive at home.

Reflection
I agree with what November says about education in the digital age. Technology is constantly changing and next year, everything we are learning will most likely be obsolete and replaced by the next new thing. In fact, two of the websites recommended in our NETS book are already gone. Since technology will undoubtedly be a much larger part of our student's lives than they ever were in our own, it is important that we not only understand how to navigate it ourselves, but that we know how to guide them through the everchanging technology frontier (there have been 8 different iPhones and 17 total versions of iPhone (different memory levels) since 2007 - that's more than 1 per year and 5 iPads in 3 years). That means that we have to keep up with it as it changes. It also means that most of the time the students will probably be lightyears ahead of us and be teaching us about our own classroom technology. I think that my attitude toward technology has changed since my first timeline post. I still don't want to embrace technology too much because I feel that while it can enhance a learning experience, it can also take away from social skills that are also important. I don't ever want my teaching to be overshadowed by technology. While I will embrace what is necessary, I do not want to lose the personal face to face socialization that is important in functioning as a human.

NETS-T2 Reflection & Investigation

T2d: Evaluate yourself according to the standards of NETS-T 2. Design and Develop Digital Age Learning

Experiences and Assessments [d. Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching]

Self-rated as: Developing

In Your Experience

My education revolved around summative assessments which included learning information, regurgitating it on a test or project, and receiving a grade. At least in elementary, middle, and high school. It wasn't until I began the MIT program at WSU Vancouver that I was being evaluated not only on my academic knowledge, but essentially "How well I play with others." Our educational experience as MITs is so heavily based on collaborative thinking and learning, it is basically essential for us to work together through discussion and collaboration in order for us to succeed. I don't necessarily feel like how I was taught during my primary and secondary education negatively affected my learning. I happen to be one of those people who is good at learning and retaining most information, whether or not I just need to memorize it for a test. I have so much random information in my brain that I excel at Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit now. Not exactly a key to success in education but it can be useful nonetheless. Drill and Practice doesn't work for everyone and I believe that  it is so important for children to be encouraged to work together to problem solve. It is just the society that we live in now. I also believe that collaboration is important due to the amount of technology that children are exposed to now. 

Section Exploration

One of my favorite tools to use when writing is the 'readability statistics' tool in Microsoft Word. I have found it to be so helpful in determining the level of writing I produce. This readability tool is based off of the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease formula (I attached a link so you can see how they score reading ease):

http://www.readabilityformulas.com/flesch-reading-ease-readability-formula.php

I chose to evaluate a research paper I wrote during my undergrad program titled Media violence and its affect on adolescents. I ran the readability tool included with Microsoft Word on this paper and it's score came out as this:

Passive sentences: 28%

Flesch Reading Ease: 21.1

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level: 15.8

What these results mean is that on a scale of 0 to 100 (college students can generally decipher meaning from writing with a score of 0-30, 5th graders can generally understand writing with a score of 90-100), my paper was only a 21.1 which places it in the area which you require the experience and knowledge of academic writing to fully understand the paper's purpose. A person who is unfamiliar with academic language may not fully understand the purpose of the paper. 

Final Relfection

I do see benefit to using technology to support content learning, but mostly only because technology is the way that the world is rapidly moving. Their futures will require that they have developed technology skills that have not been required of previous generations. Introducing technology, when appropriate, to the lesson will help to support student learning. Most children of the new generation are almost born understanding more about technology than my parents ever needed to know. These skills need to be supported by us as teachers and that will require us to be familiar with how technology is evolving. I think that one of the major challenges is not relying on technology too much. There is something to be said about old-fashioned communication. While the world is moving with computers and technology and there are benefits in reaching out worldwide, I feel that relying too heavily on electronic means of communication is detrimental to face-to-face communication.

NETS-T1 Reflection & Investigation

T1a: Evaluate yourself according to the standards of NETS-T 1 - Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity [a. Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness] 
Self-rated as: Developing

I rated myself as developing because while I have knowledge and understanding of technology tools that I can use in the classroom, I have not put these to use for this purpose yet. In fact, for all of the performance indicators in T1, I rated myself as 'developing' for this same reason. I don't have the skills in applying my knowledge in the classroom yet or how to best apply these skills for student benefit. 

In Your Experience: A crystallizing experience that assured me I was making the right decision in pursuing teaching was just a couple of years ago. I was fairly certain I wanted to be a teacher but had never really experienced being in the classroom, other than as a student. I completed an internship for my undergrad degree at Hough Elementary. I only worked with the students one day a week, however, seeing how they progressed and learned to work through personal problems sealed my fate. Watching one student improve made the difference to me. I knew that I was right in choosing teaching. I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my working years watching students develop academically.

My visual tool (from www.teach-nology.com):

Through reading this chapter and exploring the different ways that technology can be used to stimulate student learning and growth, I've found that there are a lot of options available. I also noticed that a lot of the options seem very basic, especially the use of graphic organizers. The recognition of multiple intelligences is also stressed and that it is vital to recognize and promote their strengths and encouraging them to work with their strengths. Understanding how students learn is going to be such an important part of teaching and differentiating as much as possible so that students do not get left out is a huge part of that. As technology is continually evolving, including technology in the classroom and using it to promote learning is a key part to teaching in the 21st century.