Tech Time Teacher

In this day and age, being "off the grid" is almost impossible.  Especially in a such a social and connected field as education.  Yet, the traditional mindset and overwhelming amount of day to day responsibilities in the classroom rarely allow educators the time to expand their horizons.  Most of us can agree that we live and function in a highly global society, but what does that really look like in the real world?  Or at least in our field?  I was fortunate enough to find out this past week for class, as my Masters in Instructional Technology cohort collaborated with a class from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Over the course of 3 weeks, we are working in mixed groups with several UNI students and several UMass students to research a specific technology topic and create a video about our topic.  The pure fact that three of my group members live in another state, along with the fact that my cohort member lives 2 hours away, poses some logi...

Last week, as I was dealing with the "fun" of my students not being able to save anything to their computers, I did what any normal teacher would do-I improvised!  So, instead of the students saving their practice Word docs, I walked around and had them show me their work, then I'd immediately grade it and put it into Infinite Campus.  As I trekked over backpacks while trying not to fall flat on my face, I realized that my eyes are even worse than I thought. I couldn't see the formatting details I needed to see, so I clearly needed my students to make their Word docs bigger.  Apparently 100% magnification has an expiration date, and being in my 30's, I've passed that point.  So, I cleared my throat and used my best teacher voice (and self deprecating sense of humor) to let my students know that I needed them to "blow up" the size of their documents to at least 150% so that I can actually see their work.  It was all sorts of "mission accomplished...

Five years ago, as a fresh-faced, second year teacher I sat attentively at our pre-service PD at the start of the school year.  Our topic for the day was "technology" and our building/district paid a consultant to come and teach us about various educational technology apps/programs/websites/etc. that were guaranteed to level the technological playing field between us and our 9-12th grade students.  The consultant had us create a new bookmark folder and started demonstrating the sites and tech that would change our lives as teachers!  By the end of the day, I had 20+ bookmarks in that folder and roughly that many new user names/accounts/passwords to remember.  Everything from Edmodo  and  Poll Everywhere to Today's Meet and Wolfram Alpha were covered in this session and my mind was spinning thinking about using all of that in my classes.  Other than the reminder emails from Edmodo and the few times I ventured into setting up a Poll Everywhere po...