Reflections

Jan. 7, 2009

After attending the first class I can honestly say that I am excited about this program. I look forward to exploring different technologies and trying to implement them into the classroom. There are so many teachers at my school who have taken TLITE that I have a built in network of support. I must admit that I am somewhat apprehensive about the program. I do not have a stellar track record with technology. I seem to run into many roadblocks when trying to use technology. Usually I know the basics of programs but am unable to take the next step and get the most out of programs. I am looking forward to my two year journey and I hope that I become a better teacher.

Jan. 21, 2009

While I understand the usefullness of twitter and blogging and other networking tools I don't know that it will be terribly practical for my own use. I have a hard enough time checking my Email every day. While I am interested in looking into these tools I think that a better focus for me would be on trying to better understand how to use Microsoft Outlook. I hope that I find these tools helpful and I hope that in trying them I do not become frustrated when I run into roade blocks.

Jan. 29, 2009

I discovered IGoogle today and I think it is great. I even figured out how to make it my home page. I am very intrigue by all of the different things that can be added to the page. While some of these gagets serve little purpose others are very useful. I look forward to investigating all that I can do in the coming days.

Feb. 2, 2009

Using technology in the classroom is becoming more and more of a challenge. We have been waiting for a team projector since the beginning of September but it has still not arrived. This means that we are down to two projectors for the entire school. With over thirty teachers at the school this does not leave very much flexibility or opportunity to actually use the technology.

Feb. 4, 2009

I am amazed at how students are able to thrive when they have the option to use technology and share their work with others. Thery are so much more engaged when they are given the option of doing assignments using technology. Recently our team assigned a bullying project for Health and Career Education. Students were given the opportunity to create movies and upload them to youtube. While the projects were not all of spectacular quality the students were the ones who took the initiative adn decided to share them with others on youtube. As a team we will definitely be trying to give the students more choice and will be encouraging them to try different technologies.

Feb. 16, 2009

I am finding time to be a very limiting factor to implementing technology into the classroom. It seems to take me so much time to get familiar with a certain type of technology or to figure out how I am going to implement the technology into the classroom. I'm scrambling to implement lessons that I've done in the past let alone trying to invent new things to do with the students. I know that it does not say a great deal about me as an educator but I simply don't seem to have time to implement knew ideas. I'm hoping that as my role within the school changes I will have more time.

March 1, 2009

I am very pleased to say that I have had some success with a new program. Over the past few days I've managed to create my own movie maker project. I put together a project about my summer trip from last summer. It was actually quite easy to use movie maker and it did not take very much time to come up with about a five minute movie. I did have some problem with lining up the text with the appropriate pictures. I was extremely happy with how it turned out and look forward to creating a project that I can use in class.

March 5, 2009

So much for my success with movie maker. The last few days have been extremely frustrating. I thought that I had created a great story trailer for my focused inquiry using movie maker. The problem is that when I go to play the movie the screen is filled with large Xs. From what I understand the problems are due to bringing in media from other locations other than my own computer. The program keeps showing that the path is not defined. I spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix the problem. My fix to the problem was simply to start over again twice.

March 26, 2009

Used Wordle for the first time today. I did an activity to find what the students thought about technology. The students enjoyed the activity and the word cloud was very interesting. Unfortunately I was not able to figure out how to get the wordle into the Wiki. Still looking for ideas.

April 15, 2009

Huge amount of frustration associated with trying to find a platform to host my Eportfolio. Nothing seems to work (at least I can't figure out how to make it work). Nothing seems very intuitive.

August 18, 2009

Difficult to be back at school. The weather outside is fantastic and we are inside all day. I am lucky that at least we are at Kway at the moment. It has definately sunk in that I am a student again. It is a bit of a grind to be back at school. Hopefully this session will lead to some quality tools that I can use in my classroom

August 20, 2009

Hoping for some focused inquiry time this week. We don't seem to be doing a lot of exploration of technology. I'm looking for a chance to simply explore different technologies and to develop a "Bag of Tricks" that I can take directly into the classroom.

August 24, 2009

It seems they have made some changes and we will be given an opportunity to explore some different technologies and to share with the rest of the class. Looking forward to it. This is what I thought the program would be all about. Hopefully it continues.

Sept. 3, 2009

Summer institute is finished. I'm happy to have a week to recharge after a long two weeks. My field study is set. I will be looking at how my classroom website impacts my teaching and my students learning. Looking forward to developing my website.

Sept. 12, 2009

It has been a crazy start to the year. Time flies and I can't seem to get anything done. I'm looking forward to the term and I hope that using my website will have a positive impact on my teaching. It will be a different term as I have my first student teacher. I've worked with him before and I know that he will be a great teacher.

Sept. 30, 2009

It has been a slow start to get everything up and running with my Field Study. I feel a little bogged down by everything else that is going on. I'm hoping that the next couple of weeks will be productive. I have a great group of students and they seem to be very eager. Most of the surveys have been returned. It seems that the majority of students have access to the internet at home. Hopefully this will mean that they will all be checking the homework board on a nightly basis.

Oct. 15, 2009

Don't seem to have much time to actually work on my Field Study. Far to much other stuff that needs to get done. Hopefully I will be able to focus on the field study as we move forward over the next few weeks. I started collecting data this week about how many students who are absent come and get the work that they have missed. I have only been doing it for a few days and already a huge amount of time has been taken up trying to get students caught up. If the homework board works hopefully I will save some of this time.

Nov. 15, 2009

The majority of my data has now been collected for my Field Study. I am slowly working my way through it trying to make sense of the information. On first look it appears that there will be some interesting findings that come out of the field study. It has been a challenging term trying to find the time to work through the Field Study. Time management is definately something that I will have to work on as this term comes to a close as well as for next term. I'm already starting to think about next term. I think that I will likely do some sort of inquiry into how I can better deliver the Math 8 curriculum.