![]() Question 3: What technologies are of most interest to you to support the teaching and learning strategies you prefer? How will you prepare yourself to use these technologies in your classroom? One of the facets of my instruction that I am always focused on is student engagement during presentations. Presentations are crucial in English Language Arts (ELA), especially when teaching a new concept. During my first year of teaching, I found that students were locked in when watching a video or listening to an audio clip. However, when I'm writing on the board or showing slides, it is much more difficult for me to hold the attention of my students. I used to become frustrated with their lack of attentiveness, but I find that I must aim to instruct students in ways that engage them in order to increase student success. As a result, during this upcoming school year, I will be searching for technological ways to engage with my students while I am teaching. The idea of having clickers to receive student responses during lectures intrigues me, but I fear that this will not be an affordable route. In the past I have tried a Chrome extension called Pear Deck, but I did not do enough research and quickly forfeited the idea. However, during this upcoming school year, I will be searching for a resource that will allow students to respond to questions on the slideshows that I present. Educators, please let me know if you are currently using a resource like this in your classroom, as I would love to receive some advice! I am also always looking for ways to reward students, and I am very interested in finding a way to do this online. During the fourth nine weeks of this school year, my school participated in remote learning. I found that it was incredibly difficult to show my students that I was proud of them. With the threat of doing distance learning looming in the future, I would like to create or find a good system to reward and/or praise students for doing their best. Furthermore, in my classroom, I try not to reward academic success with candy or physical treats, as I do not believe in this form of motivation. However, I am incredibly interested in finding a good system to create friendly competition in my classroom while rewarding students for completing assigned tasks, treating others with kindness, and exceeding expectations. I have heard of ClassDojo, but I'm not sure if it will be appropriate for 6th graders, or if it will pair well with my teaching style. As many of us educators enter into the rather uncharted waters of digital motivation, I cannot wait to see what comes to the surface. As I stated in my last post, I have a lot of research to do when it comes to the use of new technology in my classroom. I have begun looking for resources that meet both of the needs that I stated above. I find that the best resources are often YouTube videos and teacher blogs, as both sources typically thoroughly describe a teacher's true experience using a program or product. Getting the perspective of other teachers' experiences before I delve into a resource for myself is very important to me. Learning about the strengths and weaknesses of a program from other educators will prepare me for the use of the program in my own classroom.
3 Comments
6/12/2020 02:36:27 pm
Hello, Amelia ~
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6/14/2020 07:36:48 pm
Amelia,
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Luke Smith
6/14/2020 08:04:15 pm
Another idea you can look into is Plickers. You print off QR codes(I laminated mine as well) as assign the student to a QR code. The only down side to this is you have to go to plickers.com to make the questions. So you would have to switch between your slides and plickers. They hold their QR codes up and you scan them with your phones and it gets their answers.
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About the AuthorI am currently a 6th grade ELA teacher in Mississippi. While I am familiar with much of today's technology, I am always striving to learn more so that I can be a more effective educator. ArchivesBlogroll |