Heather's EDET628 Blog

Essential Question: How did you selected your tool? How will you use this tool? What is the purpose of your tool? How would you advise a colleague to use this tool? Develop and share a selection rubric or checklist on your blog. According to Monica Burns, "It's important to ensure that it, addresses a specific learning goal or enhances a learning experience you have designed for your students" (2018, p. 76) when we are choosing the tools we will use with students.  In order to select tools for my unit plan, I went back to the transfer section of my UbD Stage 1 document. In Stage 1, I said that I wanted my students to be able to transfer the following items: Construct a model of an atom. Predict the relative properties of elements based on their location on the periodic table. Use dimensional analysis to convert between grams, moles, and molecules. I chose a few different tech tools to incorporate into this unit plan. For this blog I will focus on the use of googl...

Essential Question: How can you use these tools and techniques to promote collaboration and build community culture in your classroom? Research collaboration tools you could use in your classroom to discuss in your blog. "As educators, we want our students to be collaborators - to know how to communicate effectively, compromise, and work together to demonstrate their understanding" (Burns, 2018, p. 57). There are so many wonderful tools out there now days to place our students in situations that allow them to collaborate on a number of different levels including: shared-screen, role-based, and remote (Burns, 2018). Shared-screen collaboration occurs when students work together on a single piece of equipment to complete an activity (Burns, 2018). This is personally, my least favorite of the options because then one students always does more work than the rest.  However, sometimes it is the only option if tech is limited or you want the outcome to created on a specific t...

An essential question to consider: How do you evaluate, during your planning process, what technology tools you will use to deepen, assist, and/or inspire authentic learning? This week we read chapters one and two of "Tasks Before Apps" by Monica Burns.  She says that when we are planning our lessons, our focus should be on the learning goals, not the technology.  I love that this fits perfectly with our previous readings about UbD. In my classroom, I identify what I want my students to learn based on the standards and then write down the learning targets for them to see every day.  During my planning process, I keep those goals in mind and look for the best ways for my students to learn.  Sometimes this includes technology tools and other times it does not.  However, in today's world it is typically more exciting and engaging for students if there is a digital component.  So I will often find thoughtful ways to integrate digital tools into their lesson...