Month: February 2017

No One Will Notice If I Nap During My Conference Period, Right?

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 3 Comments

Let’s talk about a little thing I like to call “Teacher Tired.”

As we wave goodbye to February today and say hello to STAAR testing season, I’ve fallen into the slump of being perpetually Teacher Tired. Teacher Tired is a very unique experience (although I do imagine that nurses probably have their own version of it that is admittedly most likely worse).

Teacher Tired is a state nowhere close to sleepy, well beyond exhausted, and quite often mixed with sleep deprivation silliness.

Teacher Tired is the feeling of being beaten by 130 freshmen with questions that could have been answered if they’d just read the directions and knowing you still have an unbelievable amount of work to do when they’re gone.

Teacher Tired is staying up until 11 (an ungodly hour for me) finalizing the station rotation for class and waking up at 5am already exhausted and still somehow putting every ounce your coffee-induced energy into those stations. Continue reading →

Tweet Tweet!

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 3 Comments

twitter

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be saying that Twitter is my professional development best friend, I would have laughed in your face. But here I am saying that Twitter is amazing and I have learned so much from the past couple weeks of use.

I’m a current masters student at the University of Houston, taking a class on Integrating Technology into the Curriculum. Part of this class required participation in a Twitter Slow Chat put on by ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). I’ve heard of Twitter chats before. Plenty of my undergrad professors at Kent State encouraged us to participate in chats put on by NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) or other similar professional organizations. I was reluctant because I was just never super comfortable with Twitter. I know Facebook. I like Facebook. Honestly, I’ve only in the past year gotten into using Instagram. (Yeah, I know, I’m a bad millenial.)

I do have a smattering of experience with Twitter before this class. I created an account during the election with the hopes of following news organizations (and my husband’s live debate tweets), but that fizzled out quickly. I tried in my first year of teaching to create a class Twitter to send reminders to my Twitter-obsessed students, but after seeing some of their Twitter pages, I decided that was a bad idea. A very bad idea. *shudder* Then I discovered Remind anyway. Much less frightening.

But, hey, now it’s a class requirement. No more putting off Twitter. It’s time to give it a real go. I didn’t know what I was missing. I think my problem with Twitter in the past was simply that I never really knew how to utilize it. Continue reading →

Let’s Get These Kids Moving!

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 3 Comments

quote quizlet.png

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a clear theme to my methodology lately: student engagement. You can be the best teacher in the world, but if the students aren’t listening, you’re wasting your effort. And I hate wasted effort.

I’ve found that technology is a great way to increase engagement. It, like all things, has its drawbacks, and I, like all teachers, have struggled to use it effectively. But these past few weeks have really been eye-opening to the possibilities of using technology beyond simply having students submit their work through Schoology (though Schoology’s discussion posts can be great for getting those quiet kids to participate freely in discussion, and they’re perfect exit tickets).

The second way I’ve realized that I can really get students engaged is just getting them up out of their seats. Now, you can’t just tell them all to stand up and move around without a purpose, but giving them a task that requires them to move around, even if it’s just relocating to a new part of the room, gets them engaged and leaves them no ability to hide at their desk. I’ll be honest, I am only one teacher and they are many students. When we’re doing deskwork, there have been times that a kid managed to get away with not actually doing any of the work, and I didn’t realize it until after school. Getting them up and moving around makes it more obvious if kids try to not participate. Honestly, from what I’ve seen (especially in my Persuasion Matchup activity) when the students are moving around, they don’t want to not participate (sorry about the double negative). They want to work!

Taking these two major ideas, technology and movement, I decided to try a new tool in my classroom today: Quizlet Live.

It is AWESOME.  Continue reading →

Let me tell you about my friend, Schoology

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 3 Comments

I’m going to warn you up front: I LOVE Schoology. It is safe to assume that this will be the first of a series of posts about the wonderfulness that is Schoology.

Let me also preface this by saying that my district has purchased Schoology Enterprise, so I have access to a buttload more features than Basic. However, for the purpose of getting some screenshots of the totally amazing resources available in the Basic version, I’ve created a demo account. I’ll focus on the Basic features for now, but I will get into some of the Enterprise bonus features as well.

Let’s start with a little bit of a get-to-know-you with Schoology. Schoology is a Learning Management System. It’s a place where you can create courses and store course materials for students. Anyone who’s taken college classes relatively recently, especially online, is probably familiar with Blackboard Learn. Schoology is very similar, but geared more towards middle to high school. There are test/quiz features, discussion boards, media albums, pages, abilities to link and embed other learning tools, plus more. It’s a great tool to organize classroom materials and online tools and it can even allow you to (get ready for the edtech buzzword) flip your classroom. Continue reading →

A post that’s not about technology

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 2 Comments

quote-technology-for-the-sake-learning

 

I’m going to let you in on a secret…. I don’t use technology in my classroom every day.

I’m a firm believer that technology should be used for the sake of learning, not for the sake of itself. Sometimes lessons really don’t call for tech, and sometimes tech even distracts from a lesson. I know I’ve made that mistake before.

Last week, I had one of those lessons that worked so perfectly, it had to be a fluke. But then my colleagues did the lesson in their classrooms, and it worked perfectly for them too. It was a such a great lesson that I’m going to share it here, even though the students used zero technology. Continue reading →

QR Code Extravaganza 2017

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 2 Comments

*megaphone voice* Welcome to QR Code Extravaganza 2017! Get ready for a day full of fun and prizes and QR codes! Let’s get scanning those crazy squares!

Ok, maybe it’s not quite an extravaganza and maybe the only prize is a passing grade, but it is a darn cool assignment.

QR codes are those silly little black and white pixelated squares that you see on advertisements every now and then. An app using the camera on your phone or computer can scan it, and it will either show you a picture, some text, or send you to a website. I’ve seen professional development workshops use them as an easier way to send participants to websites with long URLs. Of course, in that case, all you get is a bunch of grown adults trying to aim their cell phone cameras at a code that’s too far away to scan. (Use tinyurl, people.) QR codes are designed to be scanned up close. They’re most commonly used on posters or print ads as a way to send a consumer to get more information about a product.

To wrap up a week of discussing, reading, and analyzing persuasion, I decided to have a fun Friday in the library chasing QR codes. I’ve been working hard this year to make my classroom more student-centered and less the-teacher-does-everything-and-you-follow-along. Sending the students off to scan codes and answer questions while I watch them on the all-seeing LanSchool app seems pretty darn student-centered. Continue reading →

Painting with a Technological Brush

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 13 Comments

Dear World of Educational Technology,

STOP BEING SO CRAZY.

Utilizing technology does not have to mean using the flashiest, fanciest, floofiest of websites with all the bells and whistles. It doesn’t have to mean spending tens, hundreds, thousands of dollars on software or tools. It doesn’t even have to mean using the Internet.

Use Paint.

Yes, that program that has come pre-installed on Windows computers since the dawn of technology. That one that we all used to use to doodle on the slow Windows 95 computer of our childhoods (ok, yes, I’m a millenial – this might not be true of all teachers, but you get my point). Continue reading →