It’s been too long since my last post, but I’ve been busy, both at home and at work. We welcomed a new member to our family on October 23rd and I started in a new position as the Interim Director of Special Education in my district through mid-April. It was a difficult decision to make, … More The Evolution Continues
For the most part things have been going pretty smoothly using ChromeBooks and BrainHoney with my English 8 classes. Our Instructional Technology Coordinator, Crystal, and I did have a few obstacles we needed to overcome. The first obstacle was something that I should have thought about beforehand, but completely overlooked. I needed to find a … More Ever-Evolving Process
As my students and I continue to navigate through our curriculum using technology we are continually learning. Every day we learn new ways to save time and help make our process move smoother. Many times we are learning through trial and error. One of the main reasons many educators shy away from using technology is … More Learning As We Go: A Few Tips
When I was asked to pilot BrainHoney in my district I knew that I would have to adjust my beginning of the year plans. Most years I spend a day, possibly two, introducing the class expectations and guidelines. Since I plan to use ChromeBooks and BrainHoney on a daily basis I knew that it would … More The First Four Days: How Using Technology Changed the Introductory Days of My Class
Another cool feature of BrainHoney is the ability to link to survey sites. To do this you must have an account using one of the numerous free survey sites. I decided to use the site Polldaddy. Polldaddy (which can be linked to a WordPress account) has different levels of membership, but for my needs the … More Technology Survey Results
Today was my first day of school with students. After a lot of planning over the summer and a lot of hard work by our wonderful technology department, we were ready to hit the ground running the first day of school. Even though we were set to hit the ground running there was still a … More Day #1 of BrainHoney
In my last post I referred to using BrainHoney. In this post I want so share a little bit of what I am doing with BrainHoney in preparation for the new school year. If all goes according to plan I will have at least my first two months of practice, assignments and assessments on BrainHoney … More BrainHoney: A First Look
In a few weeks I will begin my third year as an eighth grade English teacher. Previously, I taught fifth and sixth graders for seven years. One of the things that I have been continually working on since I began as a rookie fifth and sixth grade English teacher is integrating technology in the classroom. … More Closing in on ’15-’16
A main focus in education today is using data to tailor teaching and learning for the individual. In our district we are required to give our students 4-6 interim assessments throughout the school year. Using this data to reteach students and, hopefully, fill in knowledge gaps is fairly straightforward in some subject areas. Many science, … More Focus Fridays
When I first created a Twitter account I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. Since I am a “technology junkie,” for lack of a better term, I wanted to see what Twitter was all about. For a long time I just followed the rich and famous I had interest in and a bunch of … More Twitter: More Than Reading What Your Favorite Celebrity is Thinking
Moving Toward a Paperless Classroom 