As an Academic Specialist I have been introduced to a huge number of new to me online tools. The one that blew my mind the most was an extension to Google Sheets called Form Mule. This extension is incredible. This extension allows you to take information that has been input into a Google Sheet, and email the information to individual students. How incredible is that. I use this tool when I am emailing a whole middle school their most recent MI and RI scores. I am able to collect the necessary data, organize it in Google Sheets(which is another skill I had to learn this year), create a general letter template, and then email a whole school of students their MI and RI scores. I like being able to do this so that all students have a place to go to find their scores. (Unfortunately not all students write down their scores as they are suppose to.) This helps teachers because they have a common place to tell students to go to locate their past scores. This is especially helpful at the beginning of the school year. This would be helpful in a classroom as you could send out a similar email to students with test scores, RI and MI scores, or anything else that is helpful in your classroom. A strength of this tool is the ability to send out information to a large number of individuals. The drawback, you have to make sure that your data in Google sheets is 100% spot on. If there are any mistakes, then the emails will send out incorrect information. Learning how to create these Google Sheets can be daunting and time consuming. Luckily, the first one is always the worst, and it can get more efficient as you use these tools more often. I spent a few hours with a coworker who has used this tool in the past. She helped me problem shoot, lay out my spreadsheets, and already knew which Aeries query was needed to pull the necessary information. I knew this was the right tool since it did work in the end and the students were able to access the correct data in their emails.
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As teachers it is important that we don't just assume students know how to use a digital resource. Even with our full schedules, there needs to be a time to teach students how to use these digital resources that we are asking them to build their learning on. I always think back to the phrase, "Go slow to go fast". We, as educators, need to go slow and teach how to use the digital platforms that we are asking students to use, and then the students will spend less time trouble shooting and learning how to use this digital platform, and will spend more time focused on the learning element. In middle school students come with a large range of knowledge when it comes to digital resources since they all come from different elementary schools. Some students may be experts on a digital resource, while other students have not experience at all with the same platform. I have found that at the middle school age the students are my best resources for teaching how to use these digital platforms. In fact, they have taught me so much about the possibilities that these programs present. I have seen students light up when a classmates asks me a question, I am unsure of the answer, and they know the answer to it. That student then becomes the expert and teaches both myself and their classmate. It is incredible to see how much they are willing to share with each other. This type of interaction helps to build a strong classroom culture.
As an Academic Specialist my focus would be on how to implement a school wide system of teaching digital citizenship for middle school aged students. First I would find an agreed upon time that all teachers would agree to teach digital citizenship. I would have each grade level focus on the same topic each week, but the discussions may look a bit different based on the grade level. After getting feedback on what the teachers see as the most needed topics I would locate those lessons on the various websites that we got to explore this week. I think it is important to look at the different resources so that the lessons stay fresh and don't get stale. I really like the Compass game. I think students being able to direct their own learning and exploration into their learning is so helpful, however teachers shouldn't only use this as the only way they teach digital citizenship. The great part is, now that the middle schools are 1:1 with devices, students can practice their digital citizenship skills. This is a great opportunity for teachers to remind the students about what they learned and how it is applied directly to what they are doing in class. For example, in the reading of the nine elements of digital citizenship they talk about how we need to discuss digital commerce with the students. This is now one of the most common ways for students to purchase items. If a math lesson is focusing on purchasing items, and students are looking up prices, this is a great chance to bring this into the lesson. The Common Sense Media site has so many resourceful lesson plans that are all ready to go with all the necessary resources. I think this is great for teachers because if they see a need as they are teaching they can go here and find a suitable lesson. Even better there is close to no prep for these lessons. Digital citizenship is so important and so often forgotten while teaching. We as teachers need to remember that this is an new frontier that we are all trying to work through, so we need to provide our students with all the tools we can.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2020
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