Edtech Tools We Love

Blogging Challenge Day 13:

Name the top edtech tools that you use on a consistent basis in the classroom, and rank them in terms of their perceived (by you) effectiveness.

Meg and Jamie- Edtech tools, one of our favorite topics!

The edtech tool that has most transformed the way students show us their thinking and learning is blogging.  We love KidBlog with a deep passion.  It is so very user-friendly, and it allows some of our most timid students to find their voice.  

Our favorite edtech tool!

We love that students have the ability to embed hyperlinks, images and videos just like any other blogging platform. The global audience also motivates (most of) our students to produce more thoughtful products than they did prior to blogging.  We rate Kidblog 4 stars out of 4!

For organization and providing student feedback, we love Google Drive.  Within Google Drive students can create documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and respond to Google Forms we create.  We love the ease in  which it allows students to share their work with us so we can provide comments/feedback as they are working right on the document or presentation, and we love the collaborative piece these Google tools afford students.  

Some final thoughts from Meg:

I have only one complaint .  It is the iPad interface for Google Docs is awful.  It has limited capabilities, and the typing freezes on a regular basis when my kids use it on their iPads.  I give the desktop version of Google Drive and corresponding tools 4 stars, but I need to give the iPad version of Google Docs 2 stars.

Finally, my (Meg’s) newest edtech favorite is Educreations.  My students just got iPads this year, and Educreations is one of the first apps we tried.  Success!  The students were able to create great math tutorial videos on number line topics, and after one 46 class minute of playing around and experimenting, the students were able to productively and efficiently produce the video in the following day’s 46 minute class.  My only suggestions to Educreations are to allow for editing a video after publishing, as well as providing the capability to erase only the audio associated with one slide rather than forcing the creator to erase the entire audio file for the project.  The company did respond to our suggestions quickly assuring us that these functionalities were in the works for future upgrades.  I give Educreations a 3.5 stars, with the potential for a full 4 stars on the horizon!

Why did Jamie not comment on the iPads?  At our middle school, only the sixth grade teachers and students work with iPads.  The seventh and eighth grade will be getting MacBook Airs next year--yippee!  I (Jamie) am having fun exploring the one I recently got in advance of the students, but that is a future blog post.

5 Years in the Future

Blogging Challenge Day 12

How do you envision your teaching changing over the next five years?

Meg-This is a tricky question for me to answer.  Education is constantly evolving, and I have no doubt that there will be tools and initiatives in place five years from now that will be hard for me to predict.  Nonetheless, I know I will remain dedicated to continued learning and will evolve along with these changes.  In the next five years I envision myself taking on more formalized leadership roles within schools.  I am only three weeks into my new Master’s Degree program in Educational Leadership and Administration, but I realize there is the need for school leaders who have strong skills in communication, instruction, and motivation (among a plethora of other skills).  I hope to develop myself over the next few years into a stronger leader who will be enthusiastically prepared to cultivate school cultures where everyone is committed to continuous growth and student learning.

Jamie-In the next five years, I see myself continuing to develop my curriculum to make it more about the process of learning and getting my students to take ownership of their own learning.  I want my students to leave my classroom being critical thinkers.  My goal is to produce young adults who are motivated to learn.  It is my hope that I can continue to make the curriculum more about my students and their learning interests.  I truly want to take on the role of facilitator in my classroom and allow students the freedom of choice in both their reading and writing. My district's One to World technology initiative will for sure play an important role in this plan. Every year I take a few more steps towards my goal, so fingers crossed for what might be possible in five years.  

Our Favorite Part of the School Day

Blogging Challenge Day 11:

What is your favorite part of the school day and why?

Meg-
My favorite part of the school day is the beginning of the day from 7:45 - 7:55 A.M.  In these ten minutes, the students come into the building (generally pretty energetically in sixth grade...not so much in the older grades, ha!) and buzz to their lockers.  I am at my perch outside my classroom door sipping on my tea and chatting with my students as they come to and fro. Sometimes I will have to go help a student with a jammed locker, and sometimes I will get visits from past students who want to catch up for a few minutes.  Other times I share in some pleasant collegial banter with the other teachers in the hall as we watch over our flock together.  In these short ten minutes, I am reminded of the energy and happiness that teaching brings me.

Jamie-
Passing periods are my favorite part of the day. 
I love to sit outside my classroom on my little

green stool greeting my current students, reminiscing with previous students, and sharing a few good laughs with other teachers/staff. I know that if I am having a bad day, all I need to do is spend a few minutes out in the hall with the kids. They really know how to put a smile on my face. And, I know that a simple greeting from me may make all the difference in someone else's day, too.

Getting to Know Us a Little Better

Day 10 Blogging Challenge

Share five random facts about yourself.

Share four things from your bucket list.

Share three things that you hope for this year, as a “person” or an educator.

Share two things that have made you laugh or cry as an educator.

Share one thing you wish more people knew about you.

5 Random Facts: 

Meg-

1. I have been to five of the seven continents.  (See bucket list below for remaining two.)

   

   After hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

2. Cozy is my favorite word.  It just makes me happy.  :)
3. I really wish the television show FRIENDS were back on the air!  Nothing like a good laugh.
4. I am definitely a foodie, but if I could only eat one food for the rest of my life it would be Portillo's chopped salad.
5. I have two scars on my left hand (kitchen knife & friend's braces from a cheerleading fall) and one on my left knee (playground accident in 5th grade).

Jamie-

1. I love to be out on the lake fishing.  There is nothing like reeling in the big catch.
2. Before majoring in education, I was a studying political science with the hope of one day becoming a lawyer.
3. I once jumped out of a gondola at the top of the mountain in Telluride, Colorado.  I decided I didn't  like it any longer, and jumped out at a transfer point.  A worker from the resort drove my husband and I down the mountain instead.  I still can't believe I did that--yikes!
4. In high school I was a band geek.  I was a percussionist, and I really loved marching band season.
5. One of my first jobs was a bowling instructor.  I taught young kids the basics of bowling.

4 Things from My Bucket List

Meg-

1. Become a mother
2. Travel to all seven continents (I am 5/7 of the way to my goal)
3. Take a hot air balloon ride
4. Continue to take risks and try new things each and every day

Jamie-

1. Build my dream house from the ground up.
2. Write and publish a fiction story (picture book or young adult novel).
3. Travel to Italy to visit my aunt and cousins. I'd really like to take my parents, too.
4. Own my own business (Meg....what do you think?).

3 Things I Hope for This Year

Meg-

1. To use formative data more resourcefully to alter my instruction and intervention
2. To laugh every day with my students so their memories of sixth grade math all involve the word "fun".
3. To continue to learn from my colleagues and be open to new ideas

Jamie-

1. I have already made a promise to my students to keep up with using our portfolios for self assessment and to show personal growth in both reading and writing.
2. To keep my classroom organized especially my desk area.
3. To actually get through three or more read aloud novels this year.  I am especially nervous about this one :)

2 Things that Made you Laugh/Cry as an Educator

Meg-

1. Seeing my first group of sixth graders come back from college to visit me (and receiving emails from some that attend my alma mater with campus updates)--so crazy and wonderful it makes me both laugh and cry
2. Hearing about difficult home lives of my students (cry)

Jamie-

1. As our school continues to be more rigorous with curriculum to meet the demands of the CCSS, I hope that people also remember that teaching is also about building relationships.  It is okay to have fun, too.  
2. After 21 years of teaching at the same school, I truly value the friends I have made.  Some of us are like family.  I can't imagine my life with them not in it!

1 Thing I Wish More People Knew About Me

Meg-

1. This may be evident already, but I love learning from and collaborating with my colleagues.  I want all educators to know that I love hearing about ideas from your classroom just as much as I love sharing my classroom experiences.  I would love to hear from you any time!

Jamie-

1. I know that I have a smile on my face and laughter bubbling out of me most of the time, but I am also a very serious person.  I try very hard to keep up with educational research and best practice. Being a teacher is something that makes me very proud. There is no better job!

My Proudest Teaching Secret

Day 9 Blogging Challenge

Write about one of your biggest accomplishments in your teaching that no one knows about (or may not care).

Meg- This is an interesting prompt that really made me think.  I feel like many people know of my biggest accomplishments (publishing our book, teaching a graduate level class at Judson, presenting at many professional conferences), so what are my more "quiet" professional accomplishments?  I am thrilled this year to be taking on the role of Curriculum Leader for the math department at my middle school.  As the Curriculum Leader, my jobs are many, but the primary job this year is to research and then create meaningful professional development opportunities for the 6-8 grade math teachers revolving around meaningful formative assessment.  This responsibility is already helping me grow professionally, and I appreciate having the opportunity to work with so many wonderful teachers as a part of the position.

Jamie-Like Meg stated above, I feel I have had the support of friends and colleagues as I published my first book and began my teaching career at the college level.  So, what is my biggest unknown accomplishment?  I think it stems from a phone call I received once from a young man who was in my special education class.  At the beginning of my teaching career, I worked as a special education assistant in an LD classroom. When he called to tell me that he was living in Michigan and had a wonderful job for a successful company, I was elated. He called to tell me how grateful he was for all the help and support I had given him during his middle school years.  He thanked me for helping him to believe in himself. I was filled with pride.  It was so wonderful to hear that I had touched his life and made it better.  As I hung up the phone that day after school, I'll never forget the feeling that I had done my job and done it well.

Hmmm....what is in that desk drawer?

Blogging Challenge Day 8

What's in your desk drawer, and what can you infer from those contents?

Jamie-Honestly, I don't use my desk drawer very often.  My desk has only one small center drawer, so there isn't much that I can fit in there.  Once upon a time it had a key, but that is long gone.  When I look inside, I see colored paper clips, a box of staples, markers, pens, pencils, a few notepads, a few photos from days past, and a few quarters.  Seriously, a bunch of random odds and ends.

This really doesn't shock me because I am the kind of gal who likes to put my office supplies in cute containers on my desk.  I am a basket lover, so I have a few baskets filled with supplies as well.  If I can't see my supplies or my things, then I forget that I have them. They get sucked into the deep abyss, so I like to keep things out where I can see them.  I am a very visual person--gotta see it.
Meg-
Well this all depends on whether we peek into my top, middle, or bottom desk drawer.  The top drawer has hall passes, some butterfly clips (for those big stacks of paper that a paper clip can't handle), a few quarters (for the emergency snack/beverage), some Bandaids (blisters, cuts, ya' never know), a travel sewing kit (wouldn't it be mortifying to not be able to repair a hole ripped in your pants?!), a single hole punch (name tags), a nail file (nothing more annoying than a jagged nail to distract me from teaching), hand sanitizer (we work with children, of course I have hand sanitizer)....let's just stop with that.  It's pretty evident that I like to be prepared.  The drawer isn't a mess; I have a drawer organizer inside!  I just also have a lot of useful supplies to fill the organizer.  ;)  The middle drawer is devoted to my cute notepads and colorful felt tip pens, meaning I like to communicate in style.  The bottom drawer has some hanging files for my confidential papers, copies of papers submitted to the office, as well as my books of stickers.  Again, I think this goes along with my desire to stay organized.  The more organized I can be, the better!

The Wind Beneath Our Wings

Day 7 Blogging Challenge

Who was or is your most inspirational colleague, and why?

Jamie & Meg-
This is very hard question for us to answer as we have worked with many wonderful people during our careers.  So we don't want to sound hokey, but we are going to pick each other.   We are each other's sounding board, motivator, co-author/presenter/teacher, and confidant.  We have always been impressed with each other's work ethic, and we keep each other energized and excited about education and teaching.

Visiting the Alamo after presenting
at the International Reading Association's
annual conference.

Almost eight years ago, the two of us began a journey together to put together a presentation to present at the Illinois Reading Council's annual conference (IRC) in Springfield, IL, based on a research topic we were both exploring for our respective master's degree programs.  Little did we know that it would turn into not just one conference presentation, but several other local, state, national, and international conferences.  We would also take on co-authoring our book Literacy Lessons for a Digital World based on the presentation we had put together.  To top it off, we also co-teach a graduate level class together at Judson University in Elgin, IL, on digital literacy for their Masters of Education in Literacy Program.  Simply put, we can't imagine having a better working partner.  To quote Bette Midler, we truly feel the other is the "Wind Beneath My Wings."  We seriously cannot imagine accomplishing all that we have without each other!