Critique of my Astronomy Lesson

    My lesson I chose to critique was the Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids lesson. I definitely plan to effectively use many different online technologies. I think that these will greatly help my students’ understanding of the concepts. I love all of the technology resources I have available to me at my school. It creates such a rich learning environment for my students. I very purposefully included classroom management in this lesson in the form of the Class Dojo iPad app. This app allows me to monitor and track my students’ behavior no matter where I am in the school. Having it with me while I teach the lesson helps keep my students on task.

     In the first part of this lesson, students are researching comets, meteors, and asteroids and creating a graphic organizer to show the differences between them. I think adding an additional technology resource would be appropriate here. Some options include applications like Popplet or Webspiration that allow students to create digital concept maps. I have not used either technology in my classroom this year, and I would need to do some frontloading of how to use those technologies before I introduced them with this lesson.

    The second part of this lesson was students creating their own projects and rubrics to demonstrate their learning. I really love this idea, but actually putting it into practice makes me feel worried and a little overwhelmed. I have worked hard to train my kids to be able to complete a project of choice like this, but relinquishing control of my classroom is hard. I definitely need to trust my very capable students. I also think that I need to include some specific options for my students to choose from. A little bit of choice can be really powerful, but a lot of choice could be chaos.

    The most important I was trying to make in this lesson was that there is a difference between asteroids, meteors, and comets. So many people clump them all together as space junk, but it matters that they are not the same. I think I was successful in getting the point across to my students, and reminding them of their learning using the learning objectives. 

Tools to Help Evaluate Websites

The first website I evaluated was SuperKids. On first glance it looks okay, but upon further exploration it seems just mediocre. The information it delivers seems like something I could find with just a simple Google search. The publisher information is available, but with no credentials as to why I should take their information seriously, and the sponsor information is not available. There is also no date most recently updated posted. This is a site I might peruse, but will probably not bookmark it to use in the future.

The second website I evaluated was Education World. I was much more impressed with this site. It was very well organized and easy to navigate. It had up-to-date information and articles, and well as free printables. The authors’ and publishers’ information was readily available. This is a site I will come back to. 

Bookmarking Website

Here is the URL to my Pinterest teacher account: http://pinterest.com/canarychristie/

The bookmarking website I chose was Pinterest. I had used Pinterest for personal use in the past and I know how easy it is to manipulate and organize great ideas. Another reason I chose Pinterest is for the great teacher community. There are so many teachers from all over the country and all over the world sharing ideas on Pinterest. If I see an idea I like from another teacher, I simply “pin it” onto one of my boards. My teacher Pinterest account (separate from my personal account) is totally open to be seen by anybody, and can be found through search engines as well, so I can share my ideas and my pins with others easily. I can also collaborate with other teachers I know and we can pin things onto the same board.

Something that I really enjoy about Pinterest is that I don’t only pin professional development websites that I would have to spend hours sifting through. I do have some of those. I have about 250 pins currently. But a lot of what I pin are small ideas that are easy for me to quickly modify to my kids and implement in my classroom.

I have created different boards for the different kinds of school information I like to pin. My board categories include science, social studies, math, language arts, behavior management, character education (which is big at my school), organization, for my classroom (decorations), and technology. I have also recently created a Highlights board to point out my five entries that I want to highlight for this assignment. (I did not remove the selected pins from their respective content boards. I pinned them a second time, so I can easily find them later.) 

Below are the five entries that I am choosing to highlight. They can be found on the Highlights board of my Pinterest account. 

Universal Design for Learning Teacher Toolkit: This pin leads to a wikispace created by a teacher. There are many links to other websites that have many resources and ideas for incorporating Universal Design for Learning into the classroom. This is useful because it keeps a lot of good information all in one place. I will reference this in the future when I am looking for new ideas.

Writer’s Notebooks: I found this teacher’s blog literally the night before I was going to introduce writer’s notebooks in my classroom. I completely scrapped what I had planned on doing and adopted many wonderful ideas from this site. I have formatted my writer’s notebooks just like hers and I will use this blog year after year in September to help my students set up their writer’s notebooks. Reading this blog I feel as though I am learning from a master teacher and I am a better writing teacher because of her.

For the Birds: My school is very big on character education, so I am always looking for new and interesting ways to teach it and model good character. I have previously seen this Pixar short film, but I had never thought of it to use in the classroom to discuss bullying and friendship. I will show this to my students every year to begin a great class discussion.  

Webinars: I recently discovered that The Denver Museum of Nature and Science offers free webinars. This pin is a link to whatever webinars are coming up soon. Webinars are such a great way for teachers with busy schedules to get in some valuable professional development. And having attended a webinar by the museum, I can safely say they are well worth the time. I will share this link with my friends who are teachers, and I will keep coming back to this site to see what new professional development opportunities are available.

BYOD Article: This is an article from NPR news. Being on the school technology team I am currently researching BYOD models (Bring Your Own Device.) In my research I came across this article and I wanted to save it for future reference, and for sharing with the other members of my technology team. I will bring this information up at our next meeting, and at that time I will know right where to find it. 

Data Tracking Tools

            The first teacher I observed was in a fourth grade classroom with Jeremy. The lesson he was teaching was a history lesson about American symbols and their meanings. He did a mini-lesson for the whole class and then released them to work on an ongoing group project. While they worked, he circulated around the room with his iPad and his behavior management system: an iPad app called Class Dojo.

            Class Dojo is a free app that is continually being designed and re-designed by teachers. It is very easy to use and quite effective. It gives students the ability to create their own monster avatar online at home. Then in class on his iPad, Jeremy can easily give and take away points from students’ avatars based on their behavior. He sets the buy-in as some sort of party or reward if the students get up to so many points.

            The really awesome part of this app is the home/school link. Parents can log in online and see what points their child received that day, and even what time they were received. Jeremy gets to decide on the categories of points. Some of the negative categories include disrespect, blurting out, and off task. Some of the positive categories include good character, on task, and quiet in the halls. The parents can see, for example, that their child got a blurting out point at 9:45 in math class, but then got a good character point at 11:15 during lunch.

While there are many different kinds of behavior management systems, this piece of technology seems to work very well, with minimal teacher effort, and open parent/ teacher communication. It also has great student buy-in, and without that, no behavior management system would be effective.

            The next teacher I observed was in a fifth grade classroom with Alyssa. The lesson she was teaching was about drawing conclusions in language arts. She released the students to work independently on several different tasks and she read with several different students independently. While she was reading with them she was using her data tool on her iPad.  

            The data tool she was using is an iPad app called NoteTaker. This is a $5 app, which is a pretty good price for a helpful app. It is something that Alyssa found and decided to use on her own. There is no requirement from the district or school about it. It is very well designed and very easy to use.

Within the app she creates folders for all of her students. In each folder she takes anecdotal notes specifically about how they are reading. She works with the kids on setting goals for themselves and keeps those notes in their folders as well. She can also download PDFs into the app, so she can put a running record form in the kids’ folders and take notes right on it. She also has folders for each of her reading groups. These notes are just for Alyssa’s information so she can keep everything together. Parents or administration do not have access to this.

This is a very effective technology data-tracking tool. It does exactly what Alyssa needs it to do, and keeps all of her information in one place without using a ton of paper. There are many different systems of keeping anecdotal notes, but this seems to be one that is very organized and helpful to Alyssa.

The last teacher I observed was in a third grade classroom with Sarah. The lesson she was teaching was Social Studies about the Earliest Americans. She did an introduction whole group mini lesson, and then released the students to read in partners. As the students read, Sarah circulated through the room and took anecdotal notes in her data binder. She wrote about student behaviors and how they were reading aloud. After all the students finished reading, they had another class discussion about what they had read. Then, Sarah passed out an exit ticket quiz with two questions on it for the students to answer. When she graded these exit tickets, she recorded the results in her data binder.

            I did not directly observe her use any student data technology during the lesson, but we spoke after about what technology she does use. Her school uses Infinite Campus to record student achievement data. Because Sarah teaches in a charter school, the district requires that they use Infinite Campus, just like the district public schools have to. However, the district also requires the charter schools to pay $8 per student to use the Infinite Campus database.  The district designed this tool and it is a web-based program.

            As I mentioned in my observation of Sarah’s lesson, she keeps a paper data binder. Sarah explained that Infinite Campus was a somewhat difficult program to manipulate and she has to undergo continuous training to be able to navigate it well. She has on several occasions made mistakes or had the program malfunction, and she likes to have a hard copy for a backup. It is also easier for her to carry her binder around the room to record her grades. She does not keep behavioral or anecdotal notes on Infinite Campus, so she keeps all of those records in her data binder only.

Teachers have access to their gradebooks from any computer with Internet access, which is very convenient for them. Also, because this is a web-based gradebook, it is live. Meaning parents can log on whenever they want to and see a current, updated version of their child’s grades. Sarah explained that this is a good thing and a bad thing. This is good because parents know what is going on with their child at all times. They do not have to wait for a progress report to go home and be blind sighted by the fact that their child has poor grades. It keeps more open communication between parents and teachers. She did say that the parents that really need to keep on top of their children’s grades often choose not to. Which is not good. Although, Sarah can print a report of which parents are accessing the gradebook and how frequently they access it.   She said she also has some parents that become obsessive over the gradebook and question her about every mark that she gives their child.

Even though it can be difficult to use, Sarah believes that this is an effective way to keep student records, and keep communication between parents and teachers open. She had previously used another grade keeping program, and she said that all of the features of Infinite Campus and the parent access at home makes it a superior program, as long as you get the training to know how to use it.

Teacher Technology Integration Interviews

	Teacher 1 6th Grade	Teacher 2 5th Grade	Teacher 3 2nd Grade	Teacher 4 4th Grade	Teacher 5 3rd Grade
Do you see evidence of the technology integration in practice?	I did not directly observe her use any technology in the lesson. In her room she has a desktop computer that is hooked to a ceiling mounted projector, but she informed me that the projector hasn’t worked since September.	I did not observe technology being used in this specific lesson. There is technology present in this classroom, but it seems as though it is not often used.	I saw some technology integration present in this lesson. The teacher used the desktop computer and document camera throughout the lesson.	There is a ton of technology integrated into this classroom. There are student iPads being used. There is a desktop computer hooked up to a projector. The teacher uses technology constantly and seamlessly. Technology is definitely not an afterthought in this room.	There is a lot of technology integration happening in this classroom. The teacher always has her iPad in her hand (used for behavior monitoring, projecting with Apple TV, and controlling background music.)
Was the Instructional Technologist involved in the classroom lesson planning?	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist. We do have a Technology Director, but she is not a certified teacher. She deals more with our hardware and software and not with actual implementation and instruction. She directs a technology team of teachers to help with instruction and implementation. I am part of that team.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist. We do have a Technology Director, but she is not a certified teacher. She deals more with our hardware and software and not with actual implementation and instruction. She directs a technology team of teachers to help with instruction and implementation. I am part of that team.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist. We do have a Technology Director, but she is not a certified teacher. She deals more with our hardware and software and not with actual implementation and instruction. She directs a technology team of teachers to help with instruction and implementation. I am part of that team.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist. We do have a Technology Director, but she is not a certified teacher. She deals more with our hardware and software and not with actual implementation and instruction. She directs a technology team of teachers to help with instruction and implementation. I am part of that team.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist. We do have a Technology Director, but she is not a certified teacher. She deals more with our hardware and software and not with actual implementation and instruction. She directs a technology team of teachers to help with instruction and implementation. I am part of that team.
Did the classroom teacher rely on the Instructional Technologist to pre-teach the students on the “how to” of technology in a different setting?	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so I asked the teachers if they themselves taught the technology out of context before they used the technology with content. She said that she would pre-teach technology before she introduced it with content. However, this year she hasn’t had time or resources to integrate much technology at all.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so I asked the teachers if they themselves taught the technology out of context before they used the technology with content. This teacher said that when she introduces a new technology, like classroom iPads, she spends time introducing the hardware without the content and laying out clear rules and expectations.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so I asked the teachers if they themselves taught the technology out of context before they used the technology with content. She explained that heir class uses technology no matter what the setting.  Whether that involves going to the tech lab or using the I-Pads. She goes over the steps involved before jumping into the content. Her students are lower elementary, so it would make sense that she would need to be more direct and specific when introducing new technologies.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so I asked the teachers if they themselves taught the technology out of context before they used the technology with content. This teacher said that they would teach “how-to” technology most of the time, depending on the subject matter than was being taught.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so I asked the teachers if they themselves taught the technology out of context before they used the technology with content. She thinks it depends entirely on the technology and how much exposure the students have had to it. She explained that many students now come into school already knowing how to operate lots of the school technologies, such as iPads.
Did the classroom teacher take the students to a computer lab? Or was the technology presented in the classroom?	Most of her technology (which is minimal) is presented in the classroom. The students do go to the computer lab in other subject classes and in technology specials once a week.	She never takes her students to the computer lab. They do have computer specials once a week though. But there is a separate technology teacher for that instruction time.	She doesn’t usually take her students into the lab unless it correlates to something they are studying in class.  For example, they used the lab to give the kids a jump-start on an insect research project.	He takes his students to the computer lab a few isolated times. Mostly he presents technology in the classroom.	All of the technology integration happens in the mainstream classroom. The students go to the lab once a week for computer specials and they work on projects that correlate with what the students are learning in their homeroom class.
How is technology integrated into classroom instruction?	This is a history teacher and one way she integrates technology into her room is by she showing history videos or you tube videos about once a week to help give the visual for whatever unit they happen to be currently studying.   She has a projector in her classroom, but it has not been properly functioning since September.	She integrates technology into her room using the desktop computer and projector mostly.  She plays videos and Powerpoints for the students.	She occasionally takes students to the lab to do things like research. She also said they "travel" around the world by looking at famous pictures of different places we are studying, like Ancient Greece. She also uses student iPads for games in both language arts and math.	Technology is used in this classroom in centers. Students type papers on iPads. The teacher uses it for behavior management. This teacher also uses Flipped Classrooms for math. So he records his lessons and the students watch it online for homework the night before. This is a very cool idea that I want to do more research about myself.	She uses the document camera and projector continuously. She also projects from her iPad with Apple TV and plays background music as well. The students use the three class iPads for practice and games in math. There is a classroom management app on the iPads that this teacher and several teachers in the school are using as well.
What management techniques were in place to handle technology in the classroom?	This teacher monitors constantly and instructions are always visible when completing any activity in her class.  The students do know consequences will occur for inappropriate use.	She lays out firm expectations before the technology is introduced. She reinforces these expectations continuously while students have the technology.	Students and teacher go over procedures and they model how to take care of technology when it is used. There are specific times students know when to use the iPads and when not to. Much of the time, the iPads are used in rotations so students are given an allotted time to use the available technology.  This helps with that management piece within her classroom as well.	He sets the parental controls on all the student iPads and he monitors students to make sure they stay on task.	She said that she frontloaded the students with rules and procedures regarding the technology, iPads especially. She has the parental settings locked and watches students closely when they have the iPads. If there is any breaking of rules at all technology privileges are immediately pulled. No warnings. This seems harsh, but I agree with her.
Were the technology resources provided by the school district integrated into classroom instruction?	Some malfunctioning technology provided by the school was not being used, but other technologies were being utilized. All grade appropriate software programs were being used. No additional technologies had been brought into the classroom.	The technology hardware provided by the school was being used. However, there are many software, database, and application technologies that were not being utilized. This is probably from a lack of awareness on the teacher’s part that the technologies were even available.	The school technology was being used to the extent of my knowledge, and the teacher stated that she uses the software provided as well.	All available school technology was being used in this class. I saw most all of it in the one lesson that I observed. This teacher also brought in some personal technologies to supplement the school provided ones as well.	Many of the available technologies provided by the school were being used in this classroom. The teacher said it depended what they were working on as to how much technology was used at any given time.
Was a Co-Plan/Co-Teach model used?	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so we rarely have the opportunity to co-plan/ co-teach with other educators.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so we rarely have the opportunity to co-plan/ co-teach with other educators.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so we rarely have the opportunity to co-plan/ co-teach with other educators.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so we rarely have the opportunity to co-plan/ co-teach with other educators.	Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist on staff to assist in the classrooms, so we rarely have the opportunity to co-plan/ co-teach with other educators.
Does the teacher conscientiously integrate technology when planning instruction?	She says she does conscientiously include technology when planning her lessons. This does not really coincide with what I have observed. Much of her technology lay unused or is malfunctioning. So I really didn’t see much evidence of technology integration in her initial lesson planning.	This teacher said she sometimes thinks specifically about technology to include in lessons. But sometimes technology gets pushed to the “back burner” so to speak. It also depends on what they are studying and how easily the technology fits into the content area.	She does specifically integrate technology particularly in science and social studies. She said that she uses inquiry and when her students wonder about something she will take a few moments to look the topic up with her class and display what she finds on the projector.	He says that he is always trying to figure out new ways to integrate technology into his instruction. I definitely saw evidence of this in his classroom and in the way the students reacted to the technology. They seemed very familiar with it.	This teacher does a good job of including technology in her teaching, but she says she doesn’t always do it intentionally. Oftentimes she plans to use it, but other times while she is teaching she might through some new technology into a lesson.
How much time was spent on teaching students to use the hardware technology? (How to use a mouse, to type, etc.)	She spends very little time on teaching the students how to use technology hardware. She said by this point they either know it or they don’t. It seems like they don’t use much technology to begin with though.	This teacher said that she doesn’t have much time to spend on this instruction. But she thinks the students still really need it. They do get more of this instruction in technology computer specials once a week.	For spending a lot of time instructing on the software like this teacher does, she does not spend much time on hardware. They usually come to her already knowing the basics of most technology hardware.	Not very much time is spent instructing this teacher’s students on how to use the technology itself. His thinks at this point students know how to use most devices even better than the teachers.	At the beginning of the year quite a bit of time was spent on classroom rules and procedures, and this teacher explains that hardware is part of that instruction. She teaches them how to use it at the beginning of the year and then comes back to it as the year progresses.

            When I was doing observations in different classrooms at my school I saw varying levels of technology integration. Some teachers were barely using any technology, and some teachers had multiple technology devices incorporated in one lesson. It is interesting to see different teacher’s comfort levels in regards to technology. There was also a wide range of how much background technology instruction they gave pre-teaching technology elements and hardware. Some teachers that use more technology daily typically pre-taught more than teachers that use less technology. Our school does not have an Instructional Technologist who is a certified teacher. Our Technology Director comes from a business technology background, and she is very knowledgeable about our technology resources, but not about the instructional practices around the technology. I hope to be able to somewhat bridge this gap for our school by getting my Masters Degree in Instructional Technology and working closely with our Technology Director. Most of the elementary teachers in our school do not regularly use the computer lab for their instruction. We rely on the technology computer teacher that our kids see in specials to do that. Some of the middle school classes use the computer lab weekly however. But our school does have many wonderful technology resources available in the classroom, if the teachers choose to use them. All the teachers in our school that I spoke with use strong parental controls on the technology in the kids’ hands. They were also all good about circulating around the room and monitoring students when they were using the technology. Also, all the teachers say they try to conscientiously put technology into their instruction, but it doesn’t always happen.