reflections on teaching and learning

Dear Parents, I am so honored to be working with your child this school year! I have decided to write a post as to what Digital Citizenship means to me as a teacher and some simple things you can do at home to help support your child at home.  First, digital citizenship is defined by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) as something about, "much more than online safety - or a long list of don'ts. It's also about the do's that help create thoughtful , empathetic digital citizens who can wrestle with the important ethical questions at the intersection of technology and humanity " (ISTE, 2019). As a teacher, I do believe I carry a responsibility to aid in equipping students to be smart, safe, empathetic users online and the global web. Below are steps you can take as a parent and guardian to stay involved, informed, and aware of practical things you can do to also help support your child to be a responsible digital citizen. 1. Yo...

This week I've been in Pittsburgh and Atlanta visiting various friends and family who live t[here]. While meeting with them, I became so aware of how techy their lives were and how well-integrated technology was in their lives. It was almost a dependency that they had to it. Technology really redefined the way they lived their lives or at least modified and augmentation the way they lived. They had an application that would allow them to adjust the temperature of their house and unlock their door from their phone so that their house would be cool by the time they reached their home. My friend had an air fryer that allowed them to make food in less than half the time. Booking movie tickets, purchasing things online, and checking into airports are just a handful of other ways technology has shaped the way we live our lives!  It was eye-opening because I've been so accustomed to seeing technology in many facets of my own life, I didn't realize how I slowly I've grown to ...

This will be my first year teaching a third grade class at an international school in Hong Kong. Twenty beautiful third-graders whom I've never met but am already preparing my classroom for! As I continue on my journey as a teacher leader and elementary educator, I have given myself a challenge for this school year. It is my 5  ways to use tech  challenge and I will have to update you again in December to let you know how I've progressed! I figure by December I'll have used each of these tools and hopefully by the end of the school year, I'll have 5 more to add on that I regularly integrate into my classroom or for my professional growth. 1. Twitter . An excellent example of a Personal Learning Community or  PLC . I haven't used Twitter since 2011 when my high school journalism class was wanting to gain some mileage for launching its first online newspaper page , but in May, I created my first p rofessional Twitter  account with credits to my technology f...

Often times integrating technology into education can be a daunting task. Something that is a burden or even ignored because there are a million other things that need to be done, taught, or graded. Unfortunately, no matter how much we try to avoid the inevitable... technology is an essential component of living in the 21st-Century. Students are surrounded by technology whether it's through a personal hand-held device their parents have gotten them, or pressing buttons to order at a McDonald's kiosk (I did it for the first time two weeks ago!). Technology has not only modified the way people interact or live their lives on a daily basis, but has redefined how people order food, shop, travel, communicate, and more.  It's important that we as educators prepare our students to go into the world confident and comfortable in using technology or at least use it as an option to meet their needs. Having the choice to use or not use technology is power our students have a right...

After reading Nicole Krueger's  5 questions to ask before choosing a 1:1 device  I began reflecting on how I've implemented the 1:1 Chromebook in my classroom full-time in the last two years.  In August of the 2017-2018 school year, my director at the time made the investment to have 1:1 Chromebooks in the upper elementary all the way through high school. The lower elementary classes had iPADs in the classroom and a large portion of the school funds were also allocated for a new Technology & Design lab. With this new initiative to use Chromebooks, money was now also being allocated for Schoology.com, a learning management system, in order to encourage teachers to use technology for classes, assignments, wiki collaborations (Google.docs), and communication. It wasn't just a tool we were "adding-on" to enhance our school curriculum, it was becoming a cultural shift in the way we saw our learners and how we had to carry ourselves as educators. Krueger quotes Ru...