edtech

Fall2017 Part 1: Kicking Butt in LDT

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 4 Comments

Well hello there, friends and followers. It’s nice to see you all again.

This semester has been a challenge, to say the least. Between starting a new job with very different hours and taking three graduate classes, I’ve been a bit stressed out and just a smidge busy. I am looking forward to reviving my ailing social life and adding some material to this blog. However, it has also been one of the most rewarding semesters. I’ve learned and accomplished a lot and I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned. I have a lot I want to post regarding the new job and my current classroom shenanigans, but before I do that, I want to reflect on my graduate classes.

Like I said, I took three classes this semester for the first time: a Learning, Design, and Technology Seminar, a Professional Seminar, and a class on Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling. Today’s post will focus on the LDT seminar. Continue reading →

Get Into My Flippin’ Classroom!

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 1 Comment

Who actually needs a teacher to deliver instruction when you’ve got the internet? All of this technology could surely replace teachers. We’re really just babysitters anyway, right?

Ha! No.

(Seriously, Betsy DeVos, if you’re reading this. No. Teachers are the backbone of education. Get it together.)

One textbook or article or video from this semester mentioned a phrase that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Should teachers be the “Sage at the Stage” or the “Guide by the Side”?

Sage at the Stage

The generally accepted method of delivering instruction is that the teacher has all of the knowledge and it is their job to dump all of the information into the children’s heads. I’ve seen plenty of cartoons, both political and otherwise, depicting this idea through numerous metaphors. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are many instances where this is the case. However, I think it’s safe to say that the overall feeling of education is shifting toward…

Guide at the Side

When my grandma was trying to text on her new phone, she kept saying “Don’t do it for me! Show me how so I’ll know!” Now she also asked “So when I want to put a space, I push the spacebar?” but that’s beside the point. My grandma is a smart woman. Students, from preschool to social security, generally need to DO in order to LEARN. This is why patience is such an important quality in a teacher. How often have you heard “Oh, never mind, I’ll just do it myself!” or “If you want it done right, do it yourself!”? Teachers need the patience to watch students make mistakes and figure them out for themselves.

This is the idea of Guide at the Side. Continue reading →

Gamify Me, Captain!

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / Leave a comment

Badge earned in Instructional Design

As a part of my Masters program, I am taking a class in Instructional Design that is gamified. About two weeks into the class, I realized that I am 100% the target audience for gamification. I’m a very competitive person, and this Masters program has made me realize how much of a perfectionist I am as well. When I saw my avatar in first place on the leaderboard, I grinned for days. I texted my mom, my friends, even my department head to tell them that I was in first place.

Gamification is one of those edtech buzzwords that has been floating around in the peripheral of my educational experience. I’ve heard of it, but I hadn’t really seen it done.

Now that I’m experiencing it, I’m in love. Continue reading →

Pop Quiz!

/ Mrs. Waneta Hebert / 5 Comments

Schoology Quiz Question

Ok, ok, maybe that’s a little delusional. Let’s be real, Miss Frizzle is way cooler than me. I’m certainly not the best teacher ever, but goshdarnit, I try!

And trying includes coming up with better ways to quiz and test students. They get enough paper and pencil with the state testing. We’ve got to get a little bit more interesting for the day-to-day quizzing.

Today, I’d like to discuss my three new favorite ways of tormenting… ahem… I mean quizzing my students: Quizlet, Quizizz, and Schoology (I told you I’d be coming back to Schoology). 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 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 →

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 →