Edubloggers!

Trying to decide on edubloggers to respond to was rather daunting. Simply Googling "edublogs" was overwhelming; I had no idea where to start. Also, I felt like every time I came across someone promising, the blog hadn't been updated in 2 or more years. While that doesn't negate the quality of the existing content, if I'm going to become invested in a blogger enough to follow them semi-regularly, I'd like them to be someone who updates more than once in a blue moon...

(Visual representation of updating frequency)

After some searching, I came across some edubloggers that I think are worth checking out. The first is Shelley Wright, from Wright's Room. She's a high school teacher from Canada, and shares some interesting perspectives from teaching in all grades K-12. I particularly liked her most recent post, about the importance of "Why," and why it is that we should always make our lessons purposeful and challenging. She offers some "As a Teacher" goals, including striving to be less helpful to students. And I see where she's coming from on that. Constantly giving students the answer doesn't really help them learn. It's ok for students to struggle a little bit in the process of coming to an answer. Not automatically offering assistance doesn't mean you're a bad teacher. Obviously, there's a time and place for all strategies, but in the case of the unchallenged high schooler that Mrs. Wright details in this post, NOT being given the answers is what leads to more involvement on the part of the student. 

So far in this program, I've read countless articles and posts and whole books on policy and strategy and method. And they're all incredibly valuable. But, it was refreshing to look through Mrs. Mimi's "It's not all Flowers and Sausages"blog. She's an elementary school teacher, but a lot of the issues she encounters are applicable across all grade levels. While I don't think it's productive to always be complaining about things out of your control, it's nice to read from someone who is being "real" about her practice. She talks about "classroom juju," which means that for every bad day you have, there is almost guaranteed to be a better day around the corner. Because, let's face it: in the classroom, you WILL have bad days. The lesson you carefully crafted might fall flat, the internet might go down and ruin the chance for you to lead with some great clips, etc, etc. We're all in this because we love teaching and want to be the best educators that we can be, but I think it's also useful to be reminded that it's ok if things don't always go perfectly. Also, as someone who is still student teaching, it's nice to hear that even experienced teachers have "one of those days." All that matters is how you bounce back from them.

Webinar Night

Heading into our webinar assignment, I was a little apprehensive, mostly just because it seemed like a lot of little technological things to keep straight, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to. However, having made it to the other side, I am pleasantly surprised with how well everything went. My group and I were able to work the Blackboard Collaborate site without much trouble, and we seemed to have got a lot of positive feedback from classmates.
First, a word on Blackboard Collaborate. At first glance (from watching an old webinar), it seemed kind of complicated, and seemed like there was a lot to keep track of. But, with minimal run-through time, our webinar went off without many complications. The controls for the site are pretty intuitive and straight-forward, and any time we had an issue it was pretty easy to figure out. For example, we wondered how to mute everyone else's microphones in our room without going through and manually disabling each permission. Turns out, there's a button for that. Our only issue came with turning the mic on and off, which we overlooked at the beginning of the webinar. Additionally, I hit "stop recording" at the end of our session, but did not turn the mic back off, so the listeners still in the room heard us chatting for a minute or two before we realized what was happening. (My bad, guys!) Overall, I'd consider working with the Blackboard platform again, because it was pretty easy to use and can be shared easily with others.
The tool we presented on was Google Classroom. I won't go too in-depth about it here, in part because I've already talked about it a fair amount in the last week. Basically, it is easily customizable and be as much or as little as you need it to be. I think this was a good tool to share with our classmates, because it can be used across all disciplines in a number of different ways. I'd also like to think that the high turnout for our webinar was because this is such a great tool, but I also realize we had a fairly convenient time slot... This presentation was valuable for me as well becuase it allowed me more time to play around with Google Classroom and gain familiarity with the site, which I can definitely see myself using in the future. I'm not sure what the tech situation in my future job(s) will be like, so I can't speak to in-class use right now, but I think the site is really great for organization outside of class time.
On one last note, I wanted to say how much fun I had with this project. Part of that was just because I was working with two clowns, but being in the Brandon Center with everyone prepping and listening to each others' webinars was a really nice experience. It was fun to see what everyone else had come up with, and having everyone together working on the same thing was a great vibe. Yay dolphilians!