Bruce's EDU614 Blog

Bellow is a ling to my Growth plan. It includes information on resources to help students become more engaged int he classroom, infomration on special education, and links to technology to include in instruction. My Growth Plan

At our school, we are required to use one of two classroom management programs for our students: Schoology or Google Classroom and one for administration issues, ASPEN. These tools are great for helping to keep track of students and managing their work. But they aren't the most efficient programs to help keep students on task and at an appropriate level. I want to introduce two forms of technology that can help with this. For When I Want it Busy The first technology I got from a colleague, it’s simple: a YouTube timer . This timer plays techno music and adds a lot of energy to the classroom. Also, it allows students to realize that they have a finite amount of time and they end up using their time efficiently. When students do not have a timer, they tend gravitate towards discussing issues not pertinent to the class activities.  These timers come in 3,5, and 10-minute increments. What I like about this is that the timers do not go too long so as to make the students bore...

Introduction to Tech for Students with Disabilities Tech for students with disabilities is an important situation for all teachers as all teachers will have students with disabilities that they will need to accommodate at some point in their careers. For example, this past year our school had a new student entering grade six who required the use of a wheel chair. However, what many of the teachers did not take into account was "how are we going to seat the student?" Yes, something as simple as finding ways to seat the student became an issue that took about two weeks to handle. Some classes had tables that his wheel chair would not fit under, other classes used individual desks which the student could not sit in and be safe. Now, not all teachers will have a student with a wheel chair enter their class, nor are the guaranteed to have students with other disabilities that require major technology in order to participate fully in the classroom. And even if they do, some sc...

Formative assessments are essential in order for good teaching to take place. By finding ways to assess students as the lesson progresses, it will allow a teacher to see deficiencies in his/her students understandings well before a summative assessment takes place. By doing this, a teacher will be able to make decisions while teaching that will allow him/her to adjust the teaching during the lesson rather than waiting to see where the students are at after the lesson or after the unit assessment. The result is that a teacher will be able to save time by not having to reteach entire lessons to students, rather they will have the opportunity to tweak the instruction methods as the lesson progresses to make sure that the students get the most benefit possible from the lesson. The problem however is, how do teachers know that all of his/her students are comprehending what is being taught? A teacher can only focus on a few students at one time, the result is either they spend most of thei...

As technology integrates our word at a quickening pace, it is becoming more essential to teach students about global awareness in order for them to become successful adults. In order to navigate today's work environment, students will need to be able to learn how to interact with people from other cultures and understand issues that people from other parts of the globe face. Because of this, teachers need to go beyond teaching their students the basic curriculum (reading, writing, math, science, and history) and actually begin to teach students about cultures from all over the globe. However, finding both the preparation time and the instructional time to teach global awareness is difficult, but  www.projectexplorer.org  is one site that can help teachers (grades 3-12) integrate global awareness into art, ELA, and history.  If you go to the "student page," all the videos and lessons can be found. You can choose to browse through all the videos on this p...

The Issue Growing up in the 80's and early 90's, finding out information often meant seeking out the nearest expert to tell give you the information you needed. Often times this was the teacher or a set of books on the shelf called encyclopedias. Times have changed. Students have the ability to research important issues that relate to their learning in a blink of the eye by using the internet. Today, the issue is no longer access to information, the issue is about access to QUALITY information. As people have become more tech savvy, more people know how to post more information to the internet and this information is not always good information. So, the question for today is, "how can we make sure that students can rely on the information found on the internet?" If students can not rely on the information that they gather on the internet, it will make asking them to do projects, or allow a class “researcher” to share the information that they have found. One...