In response to last week's inservice...

I liked listening to what other people were doing in their classrooms and I felt like I was not alone in my struggle with changing to a more constructivist style of teaching. I think the information we recieved about blogs and unitedstreaming was a little redundant, but for people who have never done it before, I'm sure it was very helpful.

Although I thought the large group discussion was important and beneficial, I can't help but think that some people in the group probably had something to say, but may have been a little intimidated. Obviously, I don't have trouble voicing my opinions in a situations like that, but I'm sure others were quite uncomfortable. Perhaps if we met in a large group initially, and then allowed everyone to break off in smaller groups, some much needed conversation and feedback could occur. At the end of the day when we met with mentors in small groups, I joined another group and felt like the discussion was much more meaningful for me and others.

Other than that, I feel like the time was well spent. I hope that the planning team knows that we appreciate all that you do. It is just a little overwhelming to wrap our arms around everthing.

How to Spend Money.
I've been pondering a question that was posed to our department about spending district money on technology. There has been discussion about possibly adding a portable computer classroom/station that teachers could check out when needed. We've talked about getting new mice for our C17 lab. But that has been all of the discussion we've had.
Although I think having a portable computer station would be awesome, I am concerned about how we would maintain it. I am not sure that the computers would be taken care of as they should be. I am not being critical of my department members, I just worry that spending so much money on computers that would be moved around might not be the right way to go.
I've thought about possibly adding computers to the classrooms for student use, but the money we have would only go so far.
I've thought about software that could enhance particular classes, but how would that affect the greater good?
I guess ultimately, I want to see this money well spent. We just haven't had a discussion where people have brought their ideas to the table and I think this is really necessary before a decision is made.

IT WORKED!! :)

I had my students take over for our vocabulary and submit it via email or in my class drop-box and it really worked. So psyched...

The assignment was to take each of the assigned words and place them in a PowerPoint so that the entire class could see the definition and have it explained to them. Each student got 1-2 words and was responsible for teaching the definition to the class. This seemed to really engage the students because they wanted to see which classmate came up with the best slide for their words. It was really awesome and took a lot of work off of my plate. Plus, the students are now more vested in their vocabulary, where before I think they just did the assignment.

Hooray!

After pondering what Karl mentioned in my last post, I thought about how to use technology with the kids, not for the kids. I have developed a way for students to be responsible for their own vocabulary in the same way that I have presented it, but doing it themselves. So far, so good. I will post again later this week if all goes well.

Other then that, I need to be more aware of classroom discussion. I have caught myself jumping in to lead students instead of letting them find the information themselves. This constructivism is more difficult than I initially anticipated.