Revisiting What it Means to be a 21st Century Educator

Being an educator in the 21st century means being able to perform a high stakes juggling act. You are entirely responsible for what students learn and how well they learn it. Teaching is full of interruptions, students, volunteers and ed. techs coming in and out and there are a million topics to cover in a single day, and this is where the juggling comes in. Teachers in the 21st century have to grab their students and keep them hooked, as well as teach the curriculum and the Maine Learning Results.
Teachers rarely have their students for an entire day. Students come to class, go to breakfast, have a French class, go to Orchestra, come back for a lesson and read aloud, go to recess, go to lunch, have science class, go to the library, come back and get ready to go home. A teacher has to use his or her time wisely and utilize every spare teachable moment even if that moment is while students eat their snacks.
Students need to be engrossed in their learning. It is simply not enough for a teacher to stand up in front of the class, tell students a grammatical rule and then handout a worksheet for them to practice. Students need to dive in, find the grammatical rule in books, and play a game online that helps them better understand it, cut up and glue together sentences. Teachers need to use the resources readily available to them and one of the biggest of those resources is technology. Wheel in a smart board and students who have had previous experience with one of these great machines become extremely excited. It doesn’t matter what you are teaching them, they are anxious to get their hands on it, manipulate it, mold it, and try it out for themselves, after all isn’t that what learning is all about?
Teachers have to answer and live by the curriculum and the Maine Learning Results. They are guided as to what to teach, but they have so much freedom in how to teach it. Teachers are undoubtedly held responsible for precisely what their students know, but if teachers embraced the many tools and strategies that abound them, their task would be much easier and they would become highly more effective. Teachers will always have to juggle, but what’s the point of juggling things that are not helping their students learn?
Education in the 21st century is fast-paced and ever changing. New strategies and technologies surface continuously and teachers are always finding new ways to reach their students. As students and society become increasingly digitized, as does the art of teaching. Teaching in the 21st century means always changing your game plan and constantly searching for that one tool that may help your students learn and truly get it. In some cases, technology just may be that key tool. Click here for more information.

Sink or Float Unit

Science Pre-Quiz

Hi Hayley and Marina!

Dear Hayley and Marina,

My name is Sarah.  I live in Stockton Springs, Maine.  I have two older brothers and two older sisters.  I like spending time on the water in the summer and going to the beach.  I love seashells and sea glass!  My favorite color is purple. I have a kitten named Oscar,  a hamster named Chenille, a fish named Hermon, and a frog named Gonzo! What do you like to do?

From,

Sarah

ACTEM Top Ten List

1.Google Docs- Create one document that can be accessed and edited by others online! This tool would be great for group collaborations, especially with limited amount of saving space.
2. GeoGebra- A great place for students to visualize math skills such as measuring. Very interactive. www.geogebra.org
3. Magnetic Poetry- Online magnetic poetry that is clickable. Students can create sentences or choose various different activities to encourage sentence building or differenting between words.
www.magneticpoetry.com
4. Interactive Children's Books- Clickable online books for early readers can offer varied amounts of guidance in reading. www.literactive.com
5. www.iknowthat.com-
A great learning site chock full of different subjects, lessons and grade levels with great manipulatives for learning.
6.Online visual dictionary- shows words in an inspiration web type format and would be great for students who are more visual learners and would help them create connections between words as well as develop a better understanding of them. www.visuwords.com
7. Virtual Field Trips- Online field trips that are very realistic and take absolutely no permission slips, bus requests or money. www.efieldtrips.org
8.Physics for Elementary-A great site to start introduction the fundamentals of physics, fun and easy to use! www.phet.colarado.edu
9. Publish a book- Free online publishing with out a publisher!! Create books online or in print. www.lulu.com
10. Interactive Museum- Online interactive museum with lots of information and interactive tools! www.newseum.org
The ACTEM 2008 Conference was full of opportunities to learn more about technology in the classroom! It was a smorgasbord of great technology tools!

Webquest Ideas

My general idea for my webquest is for students to explore the evolution of women’s rights.
1. What has been done (by women and others) so that women have equal rights?
a. Topic: Students will research and explore the evolution of women’s rights and learn important events that led to the establishment of equal rights.
b. Grade Level: 4th
c. Task: Governor Palin has asked your team to help educate Americans about the evolution of women’s rights and specifically how it is now possible for a woman to run for a position in the executive office such as Vice President when, prior to the 1920’s, women did not have the right to vote. You will be working with Governor Palin to help demonstrate the importance of women’s rights.
d. Roles:
· The Detail Delver: It is your job to find as many details about the evolution of women’s rights as possible. You are the key fact finder.
· The Public Promoter: It is your job to work with the detail delver in presenting the facts in a way that will engage audiences across America.
· The Techno-Expert: It is your job to add to the presentation of your findings by using technology. You can use technology to organize key facts and create such products as a powerpoint, a slideshow, a podcast or a webpage.
2. Faces of the women’s rights movement. (I think this is the one I would like to do)
a. Topic: Students will research and portray actual people who contributed to the women’s rights movement.
b. Grade Level: 5th
c. Task: The History Channel wants to film a segment on influential people of the women’s rights movement. They are looking for 5 interviews of different influential people. Your production groups are the perfect fit for the job!
d. Roles:
· The Costumer: Your job is to research the person assigned to your group and the clothing of the time period.
· The Interviewer: Your job is to come up with thoughtful and insightful questions to ask of your influential person by researching the time period in which he or she lived.
· The Influential Person: Your job is to answer the questions of the interviewer, but first you must research the life of the person you are portraying.
3. Cultural Clash-Women’s Rights around the globe.
a. Topic: Students will learn about other cultures and the rights that women have in other countries around the world.
b. Grade Level: 6th
c. Task: Our class will be putting on a cultural events night to show the community what we have learned about other cultures. Each group will have to set up a booth using a variety of media to present their country and the rights of women there.
d. Roles:
· The Media Maverick: Your job is to incorporate media into both your research as well as your groups’ booth. You will research newspapers, books, magazines and websites from your assigned country and include examples of each in your groups’ presentation.
· The historian: Your job is to research the history of women’s rights in your assigned country and educate family and friends about it at your booth.
· The Connector: Your job is to compare the rights of women in your assigned country to the rights of women in America. How are they alike and how are they different?
4. The Suffragettes-getting the right to vote
a. Topic: Students will learn about life during the early 1920’s and learn about the Suffragettes
b. Grade Level: 4th
c. Task: You are living during the year 1919 and you are well aware of the fact that women are not allowed to vote. You will each be assigned a group as members of a small town in Virginia during 1919. You will each have to write a newspaper article based on your research and your groups role.
d. Roles/Groups:
· Group 1: You are a group of taxpaying women. You are in support of women’s right to vote.
· Group 2: You are a group of women who make a living staying at home. You believe it is the woman’s duty to run the household and you are not in support of women’s rights.
· Group 3: You are a group of men and women who equally work and support your families. You are in support of women’s rights.

Assistive Technology- Assisting All

Technology is a tool that can engage students at all grade levels and abilities. It can be useful to get students who don’t usually participate involved as well as including any students who have learning and/or physical disabilities. Technology can be exciting and interactive, therefore making lessons more engaging to all students. Teacher’s who use the technology resources they have available to them can really open doors for their students.
Technology can be used in a variety of ways, making it a great resource for spicing up a traditional lesson plan. Instead of drawing out fraction diagrams on the board, why not use fraction sticks that show how different fractions can still be equivalent such as 5/10 equaling 1/2. Students will love seeing the new tool and be excited to try it out for themselves—making a mundane math lesson fun and exciting. It’s a great tool to reach students who may not get a lot out of pencil and paper lesson plans.
Or say you have a student with blindness; you could create a lesson plan using Braille and introduce other students in the class to the different system of language. Technology can be used to include all students, even students who may spend a lot of time out of the classroom for specialized help. It really helps both the student who has the physical and/or the learning disability feel welcome as well as teaches their classmates to be appreciative of differences and find new ways to include classmates who may at times get excluded (not purposefully) from activities in the classroom.
Assistive technology does not always have to be high-tech. Sometimes it’s as simple as word cards to help students who have difficulty communicating. Using the technology, however simple or high tech, can really have a huge impact on the learning environment of your classroom. It lets students know that their teacher really cares about how much they learn and what they take away from the classroom. It really makes the classroom a much more enjoyable place to be as well as helping each student to develop their skills and knowledge more thoroughly.
As an educator, I hope to utilize all the resources I possibly can to help my students more fully understand concepts and ideas. I think it is important for all educators to use all the tools they have available for them; it can make a huge difference in the life of a child. Even if the technology used only gets one student who does not understand fractions or letter formation to fully understand the concept—that’s one more student who can get excited about learning and feel the satisfaction of finally understanding something they may have struggled with.

Technology in the Classroom and the Modern Day Teacher

Technology in the classroom can be likened to a double ended candle: one end can light your way in the dark and the other end might burn you as you hold it. We are a digital generation. With an astounding number of students utilizing text messages, myspace pages, podcasting and iphones, technology is ever present. “I will read 8 books this year, 2300 web pages and 1281 Facebook pages.” boasts a sign a silent student holds up in a YouTube video titled “A Vision of Students Today”. So the obvious answer would be to include more technology in classes so students will spend more time learning. But have you ever noticed what some students do while they are online researching or even just using a word processor on an online equipped computer? They are surfing the web, chatting with friends, viewing profiles--many activities that draw them away from any of the learning that could possibly take place online. Today’s teachers need to embrace the technology their students are using—ever so cautiously.
Students are avid multi-taskers, so teachers need to carefully monitor internet use of any sort. There are many wonderful resources online that would be very effective in engaging students in the learning process. The modern day classroom should be well equipped with computers or laptops that the students can use, all while making sure that anywhere in the room the teacher can see all screens just by simply turning their head. The modern day teacher needs to be constantly monitoring and of course available to help when students get stuck. Not only do teachers have the task of monitoring the students but they also need to be ace investigators, finding legitimate and useful tools for their students that they have previously perused.
Teachers need to expand their horizons, and try new techniques. As Mike Muir put it on his blog “Every One Learns - Pedagogy, Technology, Motivation, Do Something Disruptive” --“Keep in mind that what matters most is how the technology is used, not which technology is used.” Using the internet to research is almost primitive, but using the internet to connect second graders to first graders way across the country to teach each other a lesson plan or share what they have learned via blogging is a great way to use the internet. Sometimes the tried and true methods of teaching are necessary, but teachers need to remember their digital age students who are eager to use the technology that engulfs them, and combining the techniques of old and new could be a winning combination.
Technology can be overwhelming. Some teachers may find it hard to teach their students using a tool that sometimes the student is more competent in. Embracing the fact that students might be able to teach you about the technology you are trying to teach them with will only create a stronger bond between the student and teacher. The students will be excited to share their technological competencies and feel more in control of their education. The key is finding the right amount of technology for each individual classroom. Students still need to learn important skills like penmanship as well as being able to calculate addition, subtraction, and some multiplication and division problems by hand as well as how to type and use the internet to conduct research.
The use of technology in the classroom needs to be well balanced, and it will often take many adjustments to get it just right. However, it’s important that students learn how to use technology, see how it can be used in different ways such as learning, and also know that there are other great ways to learn and do lessons. Both the teacher and the student need to come to a compromise between standard paper and pencil lectures and lessons and high tech megabyte swapping activities, creating a learning environment in which both the student and teacher prosper.

My Introduction

My name is Sarah Ellis and I'm a sophomore at UMF.  I'm majoring in Elementary Education with a concentration in Language Arts.  I'm very excited to be taking the next step in my quest to become an Elementary Teacher (preferably third grade!).  I absolutely love children and I have four nieces: Meagan, Olivia, Kennedy, and Kelsea and four nephews: Buddy, Cole, Gage and Ashton whom I absolutely adore.  I can't wait to be a teacher and share my love of learning with children everyday!