21 Things Portfolio
Mrs. Susan Steen
Thing 1 - Basics
My tech quiz results were surprisingly low. I only scored a two out of ten. I was so surprised since I use technology daily in my class. I utilize my Promethean board daily. Now, we have access to Chrome books At YJH, so I try to use them at least twice per week. The areas of my technology quiz that I fell short in were related to very technical functions of computers and specific abreviations for functions of computers. I was happy that I was able to successfully screenshot a double view of two different sites at once. I look forward to increasing my knowledge of technology through the 21 Things course.
Thing 2 - Face of My Classroom
I have had a Weebly page for a couple of years, but this year our district has so much more technology for our students and staff which prompted me to update my Weebly page to help build connections with students and parents. My Weebly page has various tabs to direct students and parents to useful information on my Weebly site such as: About Me, Units of Study, Remind 101, Student Corner (to display students' work), Lesson Plans, Websites, and Videos. I also have a home page that not only includes information about myself, but also important upcoming dates and events. I even included some fun and helpful widgets for students and parents. Click the button below to view my Weebly page.
In addition to a Weebly page, I also started to use Google Classroom with my 7th grade social studies classes this year. Students have already learned to submit essays and presentations through Google Classroom. In order access my Google Classroom you will need a Google Education account and join my class with a code. You may use the code dffdnhg to view my 1st hour 7th grade soical studies Google Classroom.
Thing 3 - Visual Learning
I used Tagxedo to create my word cloud for visual learning. I used text from National Geographic Kids about Japan's culture and people. National Geographic is a reliable web resource which is used by my students and myself to support our curricular content. I chose number 3 out of the 108 Ways to Use Word Clouds. I believe copying text from an online source into a word cloud could be helpful for student to determine key vocabulary words and concepts learned in the text.
I also used used Gliffy to create a simple flow chart for an upcoming project in social studies class. This flow chart shows students the steps to the project from start to finish in a simple visual.
Another website I used was Picktochart to create an infographic about an upcoming project in social studies class. I think my students who are visual learners will appreciate the icons I used to show a simple overview of the upcoming Asian Country Investigation Project.
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Thing 4 - Cloud Initiation
I used to use Dropbox up until three years ago. I switched to using Google Drive which I prefer for many reasons. The main reason is that our school district has adopte Google as one of our main educational tools from Gmail to Google Chromebooks. I use Google Drive to share documents with colleagues in the cloud. So for all of those reasons, I am going to share three Google Documents instead of Dropbox.
Thing 5 - Collaboration
Google Drive
I use Google Drive all of the time to collaborate with my fellow colleagues. Often times I will share lessons I have created with other teachers who teach the same subject. Also, our administration utlizes Google Drive to share documents to collaborate with staff. In addition, I have used Google Drive to allow my students to submit assignment to me.
Trello
I found Trello to be another unique way to post and share information on a community board for my students to remind them of upcoming activities. A Trello could also be used to remind students what to review in preparation for a large test.
Doodle
Doodle is another scheduling tool that has numerous options much like Google calendar. While I like some of the components of Doodle, I prefer Google calendar because our school uses Google regularly. I believe it is important for our school to be consistent by using the same scheduling tool and not having too many scheduling tools which can be overwhelming and confusing for staff.
Reflection- I have been using Google Drive for a couple of years to share and save pertinent documents. This year our school purchased Google Chromebooks which allows our students to have more oportunities to utilize technology in the classroom. Plus, students have their own school Google accounts.
Recently, my students had to compose multiple paragraph essays and submit the essays to my Google classroom. I was able to comment on their essays as they were typing the essays, and students could respond back with any other questions they had about their essays as well as modify their essays. The students really like the instant feedback during this collaboration process. |