A Reflection from My Instructional Technology Plan

I had to refresh my memory on what I'd originally planned to do in my class. I found that my original plans were not that far from the reality this year. My big goal was to develop a class blog for students to discuss books. After a veto from my building principal, I chose to use Blackboard to do my bidding. The site was visually less cool but offered the same amenities that my blog did and more. I started out having the students use the site for posting about books they were reading outside of my class. After a while, and the novelty of the site wore off, I began to feel that Blackboard was just another place to turn work in- not a transformational technology for my curriculum. I then used the site for discussions online about literature circle books. This was more meaningful and I was impressed with what the students talked about, with the exception of the random comments back and forth on the discussion board.

I feel that the online resource opened communication and fostered more book discussion than I was getting in class. It also allowed students to talk to other students not in their class but reading the same book. I believe that by adopting this new usage I moved from literacy to transformational on the Grappling's continuum.

We also did a web quest over historical conflicts in the books the kids were reading. It was not the best and I would do several things differently next web quest but it got my feet wet in creating one as well as explaining to students how to find information online.

Currently my students are using photo story to share what they've learned in their books. See the previous blog post for more on this wonderful, free resource.

I am planning on keeping this blog as I continue teaching... if you're a fan, keep checking in from time to time for more adventures of this first year teacher!