Teaching With Tech

Apps 101: Prezi! Link to Prezi Link to Prezi Lesson Plan     Prezi is an incredible app that we can use in our future classrooms. It is focused around making visuals that can be used for multiple purposes.       The lesson plan link above was made by myself, and Chelsey Rains, and uses Prezi as a tool to make a character trait mind map! The lesson is meant to be facilitated in a 3rd grade classroom, and takes outcomes from both the English Language Arts curriculum, and the Information and Communication Technology Program of Studies. Specifically, the lesson was focused around "examin[ing] major characters in fictional texts" (New LearnAlberta, n.d.), and "process[ing] information from more than one source to retell what has been discovered" (Alberta Education, 2000-2003).     Our lesson was planned to be the first of a series of 2-3, following an "I do," "we do," "you do" approach. The part that we facilitated to our peers was the ...

Twitter as a Teacher Link to my Teacher Twitter!     Twitter is an incredible tool to both expand your teaching presence, and gain knowledge from others! Like many other forms of social media, Twitter has become a goldmine where educators around the globe have begun to share lesson ideas, teaching tips, classroom management techniques, and more. For this reason alone, Twitter can be a critical resource for new and existing educators to enrich their lessons with ideas they might not have thought of otherwise.     Similarly, I believe that Twitter, and other social media platforms, can be a great way to communicate with parents/guardians. In my previous field experiences, my mentor teachers have used platforms such as Instagram to make daily/weekly posts about what activities students did that week in the classroom. I believe this is a seamless way to keep guardians up to date about what their children are doing/learning. Although different from Instagram in terms of f...

Beginning of the Fall 2023 Semester      Given the time I began my personal educational journey (circa 2008), I understand that I am part of the generation of learners who progressed through school alongside the development of educational technology. Growing up, tech always played an integral role in my classrooms, whether that was through a SMART Board, Chromebooks, projectors, or more. I recall seeing a SMART Board for the first time in kindergarten and it being the "hot topic" of my school as it had only been a pilot in a handful of classrooms. Without understanding it's impact, I was lucky enough to find myself part of the pilot group. This "luck" grew into the "norm" as I progressed through school, and by the time I finished high school, however, tools such as SMART Boards no longer had the same appeal they once did as they have become mainstream and generally accessible in the world of evolving technology. Even now as a university student, and by...