Summary of attendance

This webinar that took place at 2am CT was broadcasted live from a small school in India called St Mary’s Public School. There were some communication issues with the sound not working at first, and then when it did it had a lot of static and was somewhat difficult to understand. Aside from this, several teachers and administrators from the school takes about the types of global learning that they are involved in at their school. They talked a lot about Children’s day in India coming up on November 20th, and how there was a global project that they would complete by then. This project was a little difficult for me to understand, but what I got from it was that schools form teams to create an idea and plan for some kind of program that will help the world, then they share their ideas through Skype classroom. One thing that I was surprised to hear was the the school really focused on teaching and learning the English language so that they could connect efficiently with the rest of the world. This dedication to connecting students to the world inspired me to do the same in my future classrooms. Even though I didn’t learn much about the specific global project that they worked on, I did learn that there are opportunities for global collaboration out there, and it is my responsibility to grant students access to those.

this webinar was about using Flipgrid to learn and get to know your students by having them show you a different side of them and letting them show you through Flipgrid. 

i made a response video in my Flipgrid 

In this workshop I learned different ways to use flip grid in my classroom.  Tanya Avrith and Holly Clark showed some great ways that they incorporated all types of technology with flip grid to create some really great projects. I think one of the most important things I learned was  about effective technology integration. Effective technology integration includes making thinking visible by using the devices in our classroom, not to type papers, but  to learn what the students don’t know and make adjustments to our teaching to meet their needs which is personalized learning. The next thing was student voice which is hearing from every student in our classroom which flip grid helps us to do because if a child does not get called on, we can still see what they have shared with us so they know they are being heard. The last thing was having the students share their work, which is what flip grid does perfectly. A child could do a flip grid response and then they will hear a response from another child on the flip grid and they will start thinking about their thinking. I plan to use these steps in my classroom on a daily basis because I think they are great for introducing children to all of the things technology has to offer. I think this helps me as a student because I can relate to my students when they are struggling with things like this at first. Learning about things like this also gives me new ideas to present information in other classes as a student now. 

This webinar was very informative about how to personalize your beliefs on professional development. Every educator has the ability to construct new knowledge and share that with their colleagues. The webinar discussed the importance of how to get in contact with other educators through a program called participate. This website allows for the continued progression of professional development among educators worldwide. I think that when I have my own classroom, I will reference the participate website for ideas and workshops I can attend to further my professional development. 

In this workshop I  learned hoe family engagement is one of the many keys to student success. It discussed how to implement home visits as a way to effectively and positively interact with students, families and communities. I learned approaches and resources for this best practice. As a student now I can use to help me look out for family engagement in the classes I student teach in. I can also ask the teachers I observe how they interact with their students families and what are the dos and don'ts type thing. As a future teacher I hope to get involved and best their for my students in every way possible while staying professional and this workshop gave great tools I can use one day.

I attended the Jornea Evans webinar on app smashing. She discusses how you can optimize learning through flipgrid by utilizing app smashing. 

  I went to an online Growth Mindset Workshop hosted by Education Closet. At the event I got to see some innovative new techniques and strategies to increase my awareness of progression in my teaching methods. The workshop itself was designed more for the growth of a school system, and the teachers in it, however, I think this can easily be applied to my everyday teaching strategies. I learned that as teachers we not to constantly be thinking about how to improve our technique, and our style. I think that too often we get caught up in our traditional ways that we stop challenging ourselves, and become complacent. This can do a disservice to our students, and I learned some mental tricks to try and combat this.

After looking through many different grids found on the discovery page through many different topics and classes, I found it hard to just pick a few that I liked the best, teachers are using flip grid in many very creative ways. For language arts, I think my favorite grid I found was a grid where students would take a video of them reading so the teacher could track their fluency. I also think it would be really good to use this at the beginning of the year to determine students reading levels and needs in reading and language teaching.

During this webinar, I learned about Scratch Jr. This app is similar to Swift Playground in that it gives young children the opportunity to practice coding skills. During the webinar, I asked the presenter if she thought the app would work for younger children in Pre-k/Kindergarten. She answered that it can. I really liked this application, and I plan on using it in my future classroom. 

I learned a lot about how to use innovation in the classroom and the importance of it. Students need things to do not just learn. The speakers was from the institute of Play. They design experiences that make learning irresistible. Here are some things that I learned from her webinar presentation. Students are engaged when they are playing games, so they should be used in schools to engage student learning. Games give immediate feedback, and encourage students to solve problems. Teacher design a learning experience. Games and technology are all tools to learn, each one needs a purpose. Learning happens by doing. Collaboration and critical thinking are evident in this design centered curriculum. They use projects as assessments, like Rube Goldberg machines, to apply what they learn to the real world and the state standards. Pay attention to the 21st century skills and give students the opportunities to practice these skills. Wonderful learning comes out of the mess and mistakes. 

This webinar helped me reflect on and define white privilege. This is a concept that is difficult to talk about for a lot of people but it is something that is necessary. Understanding white privilege is a step towards racial justice and realizing that someone who is talking about white privilege is not degrading a person for being white, but is simply trying to shed light on the power attached to being white and understanding whiteness as an identity.