Week 11 Journal

Essential Question: What technology will I use to allow students to demonstrate 

they have met the standards targeted by my rubric? What are the classroom

management considerations that I must address?

I planned to use VoiceThread (and ipods) for the student product. We are trying to create a VoiceThread with a question, and students can comment on it with their opinion. This week has been very challenging with getting to know a new technology and trying to introduce the students to it! They are also working on new concepts with forming and presenting their own opinion but supporting it with relevant facts.

Classroom management considerations have been how to assist multiple students with individual ipods and VoiceThread apps. It has been a very experimental process! There have been myriad technology hurdles with school network issues, ipod use, getting student VoiceThread accounts, and using the App. A major part of managing all this is having knowledgeable adult help in the classroom. There are around 26 students and 2 adults- fortunately the regular teacher is helping me. He is very experienced with ipods and technology, plus the students are already familiar with ipods and apps. Without this we would really be lost! 

I have also had to devote hours and hours of time outside the classroom trying to get individual student accounts up and running. Only about half the students have been able to successfully log into their VoiceThread accounts under my individual teacher license. The backup plan is to use Edmodo for students to post their opinion statements. The entire class already has Edmodo accounts so it would be a simpler option. They just wouldn't have the cool features available with VoiceThread.

With something that requires so much individual student assistance and supervision, working with small groups while the rest of the class works on non-tech tasks would be helpful. I am not aware of a program that lets the teacher manage ipods from a central computer. Otherwise, with the students working in a computer lab, LanSchool is extremely valuable. The teacher can see what each student is doing from the main station and communicate with them or control their computers. Unfortunately our computer lab has been tied up with testing, and will probably stay that way.

For more technology classroom management techniques, see my Diigo list Technology SetUp and Management. Or scroll down to the auto-posts from 4/9 thru 4/12!

This past week, my PLN has been mostly the teacher who has been so willing to have me take over his skills block and so helpful in my learning of totally new-to-me technology. The conversations with my extended PLN over Twitter and WebEx have also been super informative and supportive. I am so glad for experienced teachers who keep me from giving up or spiraling out of control into The Cloud!!