Online Presentations

This week's assignment gave me a good taste and even better appreciation for the flipped classroom idea!

I loved it because I know that in my classes as a student, I hated being the last kid to write down the notes that everyone was waiting for just as much as I hated being the kid who writes point form notes of the important stuff and having to wait around for the slow poke.  Online presentations, even if it wasn't an inverted classroom, but just posted again later, would go miles in k-12.  In university I have professors who will post their notes after class or provide their power point just before class, and that helps a lot.  My favourite thus far was a professor who posted his notes along with a recording of his voice and the writing he did on the electronic board every week!  I still have access to those I think... and I remember a lot about the vectors, etc that I was easily able to go back and review with "him".

The Powtoon presentations can even appear as though it follows my writing! :)

Also, a quick note: As I mentioned in a comment to my post on social media, I've almost grown fond of twitter now! This week, being able to see what others thought of each others' presentations was great :)

Communication is key... so how do we do it?

I am torn about this one to be honest... For myself, I love that with my phone, I am able to communicate with friends that I've made all over the world.  I have a plan that allows me to text internationally, and I have apps that let me talk to my friends for free!  I'd say that's torn down walls, wouldn't you?

However, I have also recently noticed how much it annoys me when I'm in the presence of someone and all they do is "play" with their phone.  Yes, they could be doing something useful, but aren't I worth spending some time with and some attention? It's the same as if I was talking to someone and suddenly they turn away and talk to someone else without even acknowledging that we were conversing.  I must confess I'm guilty of doing this both in person and on my phone, but does that make it okay? I don't think so.  There's some things that are just common courtesy.

Perhaps the best way to do it is by making sure people around you are aware of what you're doing.  Treating the phone as another person, one could put the conversation they're having in person on hold momentarily, excusing themselves from present company to answer/reply to messages.

So, what about in the classroom.  It's something I know I've already had struggles with... Some teachers don't want cel phones in the classroom at all.  Some want them visible at all times.  As a languages teacher, I have to admit the ease of looking up a word in your pocket size dictionary vs having to find a big dictionary and look it up (and I truly do enjoy looking up words in the dictionary, but one cannot deny the ease and time-saving advantage of the technology)

New Favourite Tool:
Google Forms! Who knew? I mean, I was pretty fascinated when Facebook made it possible to ask questions there, but this is better :) I do have to admit, I'm hoping they will soon find a way to limit responses to one per person and to know who is responding. Although I really enjoy it, I'm hesitant to use it with students or parents without having a way of knowing who gave which response.

I must take a moment to just contemplate Facebook in education.  To be honest, and perhaps it's just me being naive, but I would love to be able to put my students on my Facebook friends list... It's true, I would probably categorize them all as students and would thus put certain restrictions, but in general, I'd say it's easier to get a hold of them and, more importantly, get to know them through social media.  Not to mention, their parents are more than likely to be on there.

Kindergarten teacher, Matt Gomez, shares his experience and reasoning behind using Facebook again in his classroom on his blog!  He tells of how he set up a closed Facebook group to share with parents what he does in the classroom.  In another post, he shares comments from parents who voiced their opinions on the effects of the group.  Some of the general themes that stuck out to me included:

• giving parents peace of mind.  As a teacher, I feel it's imperative for parents to know that their child is having fun and learning... especially if they don't give big answers to questions like: How was school today? What'd you learn at school today? etc.  As a parent, I'd want to know what's going on in the classroom, and, especially today, parents just don't seem to have enough time to go and participate in the school very often. One parent states:
"I was very concerned about how my child would do all day in school, your Facebook page has given me peace of mind to know that she is having a fun day filled with learning and growth..."
• the facilitation of communication between parent and child.  A few comments mentioned that while parents usually got short answers from their student about what they did at school, because they knew what was going on, they were able to ask specific questions and get excited answers from their students
• the building up of a classroom community.  I know that when I was in school, my mom participated quite a bit for the amount of things she had to get done, but my youngest sister got the short end of that stick.  Typically, parents only know the parents of your best friends.  Through the use of social media, one parent commented :
  "... it was a great way to interactively get to know some of the other students and parents from the class..."

Exciting advancements overall!