Final Reflection: What did you learn? I was really glad that I chose to participate in this PD. It was a great chance to see what has been developed since my graduate days at the University of Houston. It is also interesting to see what has stayed the same – keeping tabs of file size, what types of files can and cannot be used in certain programs, etc. I was able incorporate one the lessons – Participation Tools, into a lesson for my Resource class (Fever,1793). I also developed a running chronicle/visual diary of college visitation trips for my youngest son (he wants to attend The University of Texas). I also used Bitmojis to jazz up some of my classroom pages. My students get a laugh, and it breaks the ice when a new topic or skill is introduced. What’s next? What is next is really up in the air. My school is one of many with an uncertain future – staff, administration, etc., may be changing. I’m not sure who I will be working with or where, and I wonde
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Thing #7: Presentation Tools - Google Slides
Hi, I have been investigating Thing #7:Presentation Tools. Our 7th and graders will be doing a PBL assignment in the spring. The plan is to have them do research on the occupation they are interested in following high school or for some college. So, I decided to investigate Google Slides since it is already on the students' Chromebook (our district is very touchy about downloading anything). I chose to develop a lesson on Slides using the book FEVER,1793 . The 7th ELA teachers are teaming with the 7th grade Social Studies to read and explore this book. It is based on the Yellow Fever epidemic that occurred Philadelphia in 1793. The ELA classes will be reading the book as well as doing several writing assignments such as answering questions, opinion pieces, etc.. The Social Studies will be discussing the background piece of the book - life in the new States following the American Revolution as well as the vocabulary from the book. The lesson I developed can be seen below:
Thing 3: Photo Fun
Over RSCD's winter break, I traveled to Austin, Texas to visit my father-in-law, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew. While we were there, I went on several college visits with my youngest son, Declan. He is a Junior at Bishop Kearney High School here in Rochester, NY. He wants to get out of New York and go back to Texas to attend college. I visited three campuses with him: Austin Community College, Texas State at Round Rock, and St. Edwards (Austin). I have included several of the pictures I took from our visits. This will be part of Declan's visual catalog of his college visits to help in his decision-making. This is an example of what a student could do with pictures as a reference to be able look back over the college visits. This pictures were taken on my Kyocera Android cell phone. This is a picture of the main entrance to Austin Community College in Round Rock, Texas. This campus if 25 minutes from Austin. It is also located beside the campus o
Thing 14: Bitmoji Fun
I enjoyed reading about the various ways of using Emojis in the classroom. I experimented with developing my personal Emoji to my emails and added a few to my Smart Board page for my Resource classes. My plan is to add several more Emoji's to notes such as: This could be added to math notes at the point where some of my students need redirecting ( I wonder if I could add a sound file of cymbals that links to this pic?) I am thinking of adding this Emoji at the end of the classwork . Still thinking of a song to link to this. I will be suggesting to the teachers whose classes I push into to add these or one's of their own.
I live in Rochester, New York. (Not many Red Sox or Patriots fans here.) Previous to Rochester, I have lived in New Hampshire, Texas, and Ohio. I am a 7th grade Special Education teacher at an elementary school, K- 8. I started teaching in the late 1970's (dating myself). As a Consult Teacher, I am privileged to work with several outstanding teachers in ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies at my school. I earned my Masters degree in IT back in late 1990's when designing a webpage or using PowerPoint was a big deal. Through the years, I have found that technology and software are constantly changing and if you blink, you will be left behind. I have blinked too often and now I am trying to catch up, which is why I am doing Cool Tools .