Search Journal #2

Search Journal #2

I-Search 2.0

In my continued search for ways that I can bring social media into the classroom, I wanted to focus more on how to involve parents using social media. There are quite a few options available now than there were when I was in school. First off, the internet was brand new and almost no one used it. Now, it's everywhere.

So many parents have busy lives and technology has supported them in staying connected while on the go. One more way that parents can stay connected is to what is happening in their child's classroom. In order to explore how to keep parent's involved in social media, I expanded my search to Edutopia. I simply decided to search 'social media' to see where it would take me. 

One of the first resources I found was the guide on "How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School." Knowing that social media can be a tricky frontier to navigate, I decided that this would be a good place to start. Integrating social media into a school comes with the great responsibility of doing it correctly. So much can go wrong, it is important to have guidelines in place to protect students, parents, and ourselves as educators.

I also found a blog "Bringing Parents and Guardians into Your PBL Projects" that discusses just one of the ways to involve parents in their child's classroom. Sites such as Edmodo and Twitter can make it easier to make parents a part of the classroom environment, even if they are not able to be in the classroom physically. I also found the blog "Helping Parents Embrace Social Media to Stay Connected in the Classroom." 

From these new resources, I'm finding that social media can be used to share and communicate via documents (GoogleDocs), showcasing student work using Instagram, keeping a running commentary of classroom events via Twitter or Edmodo, or even creating a class website where parents can keep tabs on what is happening and what resources are available for them to use.

Search Journal

I-Search 2.0 Search Journal Entries

What I have been finding about using social media technology in the classroom...

Today I joined Connected Educators. From what I found, I wasn't very impressed with what it had to offer. Maybe I just wasn't navigating it properly but the groups that were available didn't have many forums or resources available for me to explore. After this, I decided to go to a different social media sight that I have more familiarity in exploring....

I love Pinterest. I love crafts, cooking, and DIY projects. Pinterest lets me explore new ways to do these things that I love. I also am crazy about the fact that Pinterest can be a great resource for teachers. To get started, I searched "education communities" and up popped a list of the available boards to follow. I chose to follow: Connection to Collaboration, Personalized Learning, and Social Media. 

The one I was instantly drawn to the most is the Social Media board. Something I began thinking about for this research project was "How can I implement social media/communication in our classroom more?" While my mentor teacher told me that he usually has the students write out class articles (each student shares something they learned during the week) which he puts into an email newsletter with some pictures from throughout the week, what if there was a way that I could create a classroom website where families could keep up with what we're doing and learning in the classroom. 

With all of the tools that are available for social media, this is why I was drawn to this board in particular.  I found a 'pin' which gives 10 Ways to Use Instagram in the Classroom and leads you to a teacher blog. I absolutely love this idea! Some suggestions from it are to create a class-only Instagram account that the families can access - but I could also see this being used to upload photos to a website too.

I also found a resource about using Social Media Icebreakers in the classroom. This link again led me to the same teacher blog as the Instagram site. While it isn't using actual technology, it is using technology inspired methods of having students introduce themselves. By creating a classroom "Facebook" bulletin board, it gives students the opportunity to share information about themselves with each other - especially when it is a completely new class.

For the final resource on Social Media in the classroom, I chose a 'pin' that give tips on Engaging Parents via Social Media. Lo and behold, when I followed the link, it took me to the same teacher blog as my first two resources. This initial exploration of Pinterest has not only given me some technology issues to look into, but also directed me to a new resource to explore... the We are Teachers blog site. 

Blog Post #7 - Website Reflection

Over the last several weeks, we have worked on implementing interactive websites that focus on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. For mine and Brianna's website, we created a supportive website for "The Masque of the Red Death." When designing this website, we took several factors into consideration. 

First, we considered what the goals of the assignment were for the students in Mr. Mattson's class. In the weeks prior to using our website, the students were reading "The Raven" and learning to use plot diagrams to develop an understanding of literary methods Poe uses in his writing. They were then supposed to do the same for "The Masque of the Red Death" and our specific goals for the students using our website were: 

1) Recognize and analyze how literary devices are used 

to establish the story's tone and mood.

2) Analyze how symbolism is used in this short story 

by Edgar Allan Poe.

Along with building a supportive, interactive website, we elicited feedback from both the students and our peers in how successful the website was in getting the students to those goals. For student perspective, we created this form which asks them to rate how helpful the website was, how easy it was to navigate, and we also included a few questions which encouraged the students to reflect on their own comprehension by making connections between "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Raven." I was less concerned with how positive the student feedback on our website was and more interested in their reflections on their interaction with the website.

From the peer feedback, we were able to make revisions to the website prior to its launch and structure it in a more friendly manner for the students. Mr. Mattson also had feedback for us which was helpful as he knows the students we would be working with and what would work best for them as learners. 

UDL GUIDELINES DEVELOPMENT

When designing our website and goals for this assignment, we took the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines into consideration. A tool which my partner and I used in the early development stages was the UDL Educator Worksheet. While we focused on many of the UDL Guidelines, I felt that the ones we were most successful in addressing were:

I - Multiple Means of Representation:

• 1- Options for Perception
• 1.2 - Auditory Representation and 1.3 - Visual Representation. We included a narrated video of a reading of "The Masque of the Red Death" that, in addition to the text e-book, students could choose to listen to the story and read along with the words.
• 2 - Options for Language
• 2.1 - Clarification, 2.3 - Decoding of Text, 2.5 - Multiple Medias. We pulled some of the more complex vocabulary that Poe uses in this story and provided definitions and flash cards as an option for student use. We also read through the story several times on our own and provided guiding questions for students to read as they read the story. Asking questions while reading is very important to comprehension.

II - Multiple Means for Action and Expression

• 5 - Options for Expression and Communication
• 5.1 - Multiple Medias for Communication - Poe used a lot of symbolic language and his representation of the Seven Rooms was deeper than just the decoration. We provided a page which gave an image of one of the Seven Rooms (there was so much artwork inspired by this story) and a description of what the color and room placement symbolized.

III - Multiple Means of Engagement

• 9 - Options for Self-Regulation
• 9.3 - Self-Assessment and Reflection. By providing a feedback form that not only let us know how we did in creating an interactive website, we also asked the students (as part of the form) to reflect on their understanding and connection to the story. Their comprehension was the goal of this reading and I felt that their feedback let us know we had supported their learning in multiple ways.

FINAL THOUGHTS & REFLECTION

Some guiding questions we focused on were:

• At the core of UDL is the premise that often the curriculum is disabled (and disabling!). It is not flexible; it often poses barriers, and consequently prevents rather than supports optimal learning experiences. Do you agree or disagree with this view? Why or why not?

I agree with this statement. Curriculum is often packaged as a "one-size fits all" prescription when, in reality, no two students learn the same or are at the same level. Treating curriculum (and students) in this way is why curriculum can be labeled as disabled/disabling. It is our job as teachers to make sure all students, no matter their skill set or ability level, can access the curricular information and be successful in meeting education goals.

• What are the benefits of analyzing the curriculum for strengths and weaknesses rather than focusing on the student’s strengths and weaknesses? What are the challenges of this approach?

Analyzing the curriculum for strengths and weaknesses rather than focusing on the students, takes the judgement away from their being a problem with the student. Focusing on student strengths and weaknesses creates the opportunity to label a student as "different" than other students, whether it be as a gifted or struggling learner. Again, as teachers, we are supposed to be facilitating learning, and by addressing the strengths and weaknesses of curriculum, we are forced to assess our own strengths and weaknesses as educators. The first question a teacher should ask should be "What could I have done differently?" Not, "What could the student do differently?" If a student is struggling to understand curriculum, it is not a deficiency on the student's part, but on the curriculum and delivery. This is a challenging situation because we have one set of curriculum and anywhere from 20-30 students. Deciding how to make the curriculum "work" for all of those students takes time, effort, and energy. It is taking that time, effort, and energy that separates successful teachers from unsuccessful teachers. 

• How can instructional websites help to address disabling curriculum and foster student independence? What are the strengths and weaknesses to this approach to teaching and learning  

Instructional websites address a potentially disabling curriculum and helps foster student independence by giving them the tools to help them learn and making them share in the responsibility and ownership of their own learning. The strengths of using UDL Guidelines in building curriculum include supporting more types of learning styles and levels, and making the curriculum more accessible to students. The weaknesses include still not reaching every learner, some supports may not be helpful to students, and there is a higher time commitment to creating a UDL curriculum.

While differentiating instruction using UDL Guidelines asks teachers to put more effort into adjusting and analyzing curriculum for strengths and weaknesses, it also provides the opportunity to reach students more efficiently than using pre-packaged materials. Allowing for multiple entry and exit points of assignments ensures that students can access the material and interact with it how they are best able to. It is important to give students the responsibility of participating in their own learning and by designing curriculum that they are able to connect with, they should be more apt to want to participate and learn. I think that instructional websites, when designed correctly (to be efficient), can be a major benefit to students, especially older ones. Engaging students in a variety of ways and allowing them to express and communicate their understanding in multiple ways makes learning (and teaching) a more successful endeavor.