Month: September 2020

Pinterest as a Global Educator tool?

Post author By arochor
Post date September 29, 2020
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Since I can remember I was using Pinterest to get ideas about absolutely everything. From the hairstyles, to how I want to decorate my house. Not only me, but I got my mom and boyfriend’s family hooked on Pinterest. It was not until recently I thought of using it for my classroom. Just to get ideas on how I would set up my classroom, what supplies other teachers are using, and fun projects to do in my classroom. Here is my Pinterest if you would like to check it out, another tool in my teacher toolbox to becoming a global educator. That is how I thought Pinterest would be useful in my classroom. However, I did not know that it would be used as a global educator tool until last night when I was reading my textbook. This textbook was The Global Educator Leveraging Technology for Collaborative Learning & Teaching. Teachers are using Pinterest as a global educator tool and I will tell you how!

I found this article 40 Ways Teachers Can Use Pinterest In The Classroom. I will not be discussing all 40, but I recommend reading this article to learn all the ways to use Pinterest. Today I will be talking about the one that I believe is the best way to use Pinterest for global educators. I did not know that Pinterest could be used to swap lesson plans. You can either message the other teacher directly for there lesson plans, or you can follow there Pinterest board about lesson plans, classroom setup, management, and a whole lot of other helpful teaching tips. For me, I just created this awesome worksheet about partial sum and the way to do it. Within the next week when I make sure I finished it completely I will post it on Pinterest for other teachers to see it and be able to use it in there own classroom. Instead of using Teacher Pay Teachers, we can use Pinterest as the freeway to give ideas and get ideas for our classroom.

I am so excited that I learned Pinterest can be used as a global educator tool; it already is a social media platform that I love, and now being able to use it in my classroom and to connect with other teachers all over the world makes me want to use it even more than I already do.

*Make sure to check out the articles about the different ways to you Pinterest in the classroom! Also, make sure to check out my Pinterest so we can all stay connected as global educators.

Tags GEN2108, global educator, Pinterest

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Media-rich Technology with Collaboration

Post author By arochor
Post date September 21, 2020
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2020 has been a crazy year, mostly everyone in the United States was affected by Covid-19. Students could not go into school and adults could not go into work. All of us had to learn how to use technology to collaborate and work together. There as been a lot of new media-rich technology that has been introduced in these trying times. Such as zoom, google meets, and Microsoft teams. Even though we are in the safety of our homes we have been able to collaborate with others. Today we will be talking about Microsoft teams and how it has impacted our collaboration.

In Abby Schilbach’s blog about Microsoft teams, she discusses the new updates given to teams, for hybrid, virtual, and in-class instruction. Microsoft Teams have come up with 6 updates to make it easier for parents, students, and educators to work together to make it a successful school year for our student while Schilbach’s blog talks about 6, today I will be talking about the one that I believe has made it easy for everyone to collaborate. If you want to read about all of the others check out her blog.

A feature that is new on Microsoft teams is Spotlight. I believe this is going to the most effective in teams when it gets released. It allows collaboration with students, parents, and educators. Spotlight is a video of the educators or presenters. It is like zoom or googles meets if you are familiar with them, but the difference is that teams allow the teacher to control the main video feed that the students see. This also allows the teachers to be able to see all of their students in one place. The spotlight will also be useful when having parent-teacher conferences, meet the teacher night, and other parent-teacher contacts. This allows the teacher to be in charge of the video and control what is going on. Spotlight is also useful for when students are working in group activities, they can go into their own groups, and the teacher can see what is being done. Spotlight is going to be useful for teachers, but it will also be useful for all other business that requires meetings and has access to Microsoft.

I am excited to try this feature out, please leave a comment if you are going to try it and how you will in corporate it in collaborative learning.

Tags collaboration, GEN2108, media-rich, MSEduCentral, technology

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How to manage virtual and face-to-face learning at the same time

Post author By arochor
Post date September 14, 2020
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While I was scrolling through twitter to see how education technology is used in the classroom. I came across this blog about how to manage face-to-face and virtual learning together. I thought it was an interesting way to talk about education technology because zoom and virtual learning will be a technology used frequently in the classroom. Principal Eric Sheninger discussed how he is helping his fellow teachers work with students online and in-person at the same time. Look, it is already difficult being a teacher, especially in a classroom of 20-25 students and only you. You have to keep your eye on everyone while teaching a lesson. Thinking about it now, it must be even more difficult when half of your class is online, and the other half is in your classroom, right in front of you. How do you keep an eye on both and teach lessons? After reading Eric Sheninger’s post, I have found a few ways for teaching to be easier on the teacher, and still fun and educational for the students.

First, you need to think about how time is being used in your classroom. How are you going to fit everything you need to teach in a specific time frame? Are the lessons going to work for the students who are virtually learning and are face-to-face at the same time? These are important questions educators need to be asking themselves. Scheninger has come up with a framework for managing virtual and face-to-face instruction at the same time. While reading the framework I was thinking to myself does this work with classes that are longer or shorter than 50 minutes, and it can work. You as the teacher can break down each section to the specific time you need.

In Scheninger’s example, he has the class broken into 3 groups in a 50-minute class, with one group having 3 sections. In group A it is all about the mini-lesson, in this lesson, the teachers can have their morning meeting and discuss what the students will be learning. This is typically 10 minutes long, but the teacher can modify it to the time they need. In group B, there are 3 stations, each station 10 minutes long. In station 1, there is target instruction, station 2 is adaptive learning, and station 3 is independent or group work. To get a better understanding of what to do in each section, I recommended reading this blog. In group C the last group formative assessment or closure. Scheninger talks about this model as one of the best ways to help manage and teach a class. One thing teachers can do is have all of the students work together. This allows the students who are virtual to work with the in-person students. I recommend that everyone try it in their classroom, as virtual and in-person teaching may become the norm.

Please leave a comment below if you have tried this or are going to try this in your classroom and please let me know how it went.