A. Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to Students

TPE1. Specific Pedagogical Skills for Subject Matter Instruction

How can technology help you make your subject matter comprehensible to students?

Reflection:


1. One way to make subject matter comprehensible to students is to screencast a lesson and then post it to a web page or blog. Mr. Fjelstrom, a high school geometry teacher, screencasts his lessons and then posts them to a web page and blog for students to review at their own convenience. A student is able to watch the lesson at their own pace and as many times as they like. They are also able to communicate with their teacher using the blog or instant messaging him.

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B. Assessing Student Learning

TPE2. Monitoring Student Learning During Learning
TPE3. Interpretation and Use of Assessments

How can technology help you assess student learning?

Reflection:


(TPE2&3) There are many electronic tools available for teachers to use in assessment. One such tools is Edusoft. This website is a subscription that allows you to create assessements according to standards and receive excellent data to help drive instruction. For example, if I created an assessment for math on a given standard, I could give it to my class in the morning, run the scantrons at recess, retrieve the data, re-teach in the afternoon an give the assessment again for those who needed more practice. Sweet!

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C. Engaging and Supporting Students in Learning

TPE4. Making Content Accessible
TPE5. Student Engagement
TPE6. Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Practices (k-3, 4-8, or 9-12)
TPE7. Teaching English Learners

How can technology help you engage and support students in learning?

Reflection:


1. Podcasting is one way to engage students in learning. Podcasting requires students to read, research, extract information, write and re-write, and then finally narrate the podcast. Students have to read and re-read their information, thus practicing for reading fluency and intonation. When students record their scripts, they then have to listen to themselves and determine whether or not they've "hit the target" for the audience. That's another great thing about podcasting. The end product is posted to the Internet and made accessible to the world at large. Now virtually anyone can share in their learning!

2. A classroom blog can help to make content accessible (TPE 4), and engage students in learning (TPE5). Mr. Kootman, a 4th grade teacher, has his class take turns posting the day's events in a blog. He focuses on an "attention grabber", proper punctuation and grammar. Students take notes as the day progresses and then proceeds through the writing process to create a document that can be posted in the daily blog. Parents and students are free to comment on each post. This activity serves as a motivator for student writing as well as reading.

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D. Planning Instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for Students

TPE8. Learning about Students
TPE9. Instructional Planning

How can technology help you plan instruction and design learning experiences for students?

Reflection:
PowerPoint Presentations (TPE9) help to create comprehensible input for all learners. Using multiple modalities, we are able to access the brain in a variety of ways thus helping students to retain more. This PowerPoint presentation was created for third grade students. The original version contained many embedded videos to help explain the different geographical features. The presentation was also designed in a non-linear fashion using the kiosk feature in PowerPoint. This allowed students to navigate the presentation much like you would a web page.





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E. Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning

TPE10. Instructional Time
TPE11. Social Environment

How can technology help you create and maintain an effective environment for student learning?

Reflection:

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F. Developing as a Professional Educator

TPE12. Professional, Legal and Ethical Obligations
TPE13. Professional Growth

How can technology help you develop as a professional educator?

Reflection:
1. Google Scholar (TPE13) Technology provides a host of opportunities to grow as a professional educator. There are literally millions of professional articles posted to read online. One excellent source for professional articles is Google Scholar.

"Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research." (from the Google Scholar page)

Tutorials are everywhere on the Internet. If you want to learn how to do something on the computer, chances are you'll find a tutorial that will walk you through it. One of my favorites is Learning Electric. This site walks you through basic Microsoft products as well as other applications geared towards student and teacher productivity. What a great way to develop as a professional educator. Check it out! It's free!
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