helloit'skatherine

Staying Relevant  Nothing keeps me more humble about my age than when my students learn a new Tik Tok dance or when they start talking about what is “bussin” or “slaps.”  Although I am in the group of younger educators at my school, I feel a HUGE generational gap between my 4th graders and myself, and the impacts of technology have a lot to do with that. Image Source: Giphy.com It’s important for teachers to know more than just our classroom content and educational theory, we have to know our students.  Really knowing them goes beyond knowing their personal interests and individual needs; We need to understand what’s relevant to their generation, and w ithin that c ategory, how their generation is impacted by and responds to educational technology.  Therefore, I’ve been exploring all about that! What Does the Research Say? There are a lot of great websites and organizations that have research reports on educational technology and students.  Although I brows...

Students are the Leaders of their Learning When I think about active learning, “active” is the word I focus on.  Active learning is not a new concept to me, but it’s one I recently learned even more about.  Active learning doesn’t necessarily mean students are physically active while learning, (although they certainly could be, and that’s one type of it!) but rather, they have active involvement in their learning.  Active learning is student-centered, interest based, involves a lot of peer to peer interaction, and the teacher is a facilitator of student ideas instead of teacher ideas.  It takes quality and intentional planning from educators, but it produces quality and intentional work from students.  Best of all, it’s the most engaging type of learning, and leads to very high student retention of material. Diving into an Example I chose to explore "A Year in Six Words" as an example of active learning.  I wanted to check out this example because it immed...

  What are Digital Spaces? This weekend, I learned about digital spaces and the concept of Visitors and Residents from the blog of David White .  I had never heard of those terms before, so it was interesting to explore, and simple to understand.  We all engage on the internet in different ways and utilize sites and apps uniquely.  In his blog, White talks about how being a Visitor is similar to getting a tool from a garden shed.  You go there to get the tool, use it, and then you’re done.  Examples of  that online would be Googling something, checking your mobile banking app, ordering a Lyft, etc.  Residents spend time on the internet really engaging with content, and they use it to connect.  Examples of this would be creating a shared unit via Google Docs with a co-teacher, text messaging with friends, blogging, etc.  We all have different situations that we are a Visitor or R esident in, and although there’s some ebb and flow, most p...

  #WhatsTrending I am someone who enjoys staying up with the latest educational trends, so I enjoyed exploring some this week through this blog post from the International Society of Technology in Education. As Nicole stated in my course assignment post, “ many of these “trends” stand the test of time- we may alter our approach to teaching them or discover a new rationale for why they are important.”   I find that statement to be so true during the (ongoing) pandemic.  Although some of these “trends” were not necessarily new, teachers had to shift their ways of implementing them.  For example, I have prioritized Social Emotional Learning in my classroom for years and it is something I feel pretty knowledgeable about and trained in, but I really had to rethink what that looked and felt like in my classroom community online.  Digital Citizens of the 4th Grade... I was most interested in the trend of Digital Citizenship because it felt extra topical right now....

Exploring Technology Frameworks This week, I learned about different frameworks, models, and matrices that help educators reflect on their use of technology.  Prior to the reading and videos I watched about these systems, I had no idea there were any technology frameworks at all.  There are several different ones that educators use, but since I had never heard of any of them, I mostly explored the SAMR model, since it is the most common, so I figured I'd start there. This ​​ video , in which Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the creator of the model, speaks about about the levels, helped me to understand a lot more.  The SAMR model has four different levels of technology use: substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition.  They move in order from the smallest impact of technology to the biggest impact technology can make.  In the substitution and augmentation levels, technology is seem as an “enhancement,” where in the modification and redefinition levels, tech...