So excited for the future, cannot wait to start teaching my own class

So after a very successful and fun Professional Experience, I am now more than ever so very very motivated to finish this degree and start teaching my own class.  I had the most fabulous mentor teacher and teacher aide as well as a wonderful group of students.  Not every second of the day went to plan, but it was a great learning experience to be able to overcome those tough times and be able to come out the other side, with a smile on my face.

During my Professional Practice I received some fantastic feedback from my mentor teacher, but the one that stuck to me the most was that she though I had done so well that I was a “teacher without a class”.  That amongst all the other great feedback that I received really cemented in my mind that I am on my way to doing what I want to do with the rest of my life.  I want to make a difference in my students lives as they have so far made such a difference in mine.  Good luck to all my fellow students with the rest of your studies and I hope that you are all still on the path to doing what you set out to do when you started, although I have another 2 years to go I feel that it’s only a small amount of time in the scheme of things to come.  As always here is a TED Talk that resonates with me and encourages me to be the best teacher I can be.

 

Jumping on the band wagon

I was just reading a post from fellow student Sara and she also mentioned Nadyne‘s post and decided that it would be good for me to also jump on the band wagon and add my ups and downs during this prac.  But firstly I have to say that I am loving teaching, my mentor teacher is fantastic, the teacher aide is beautiful and the students are great.  I also have to add that although I am learning a lot about using different ICTs in the classroom, I am also learning so much more, part of that is that some days are not going to be great and that it is ok for everything that you have planned to go down the waist side, today was one of those days and I came out of it with a smile on my face.  Thank goodness for Plan B.

As for ICT, well the interactive whiteboard in the classroom is still not interactive, we can still use it but we have pretended it is interactive. I am pushing the buttons on the laptop when the students come up to use it and it is still giving them the instant feedback, which is fantastic, especially in a Special School setting.  YouTube is my friend, I have been able to really engage the students using some fun videos and I have been able to do some fun English lessons using books and videos together.  We have used digital cameras when conducting science experiments and project them on the interactive white board straight away, this makes the concrete experiments and results so much more real when they see themselves in the photos, also great when comparing.  Another fantastic tool has been the iPad,so many uses with all the different apps.  One of my students uses the iPad to learn how to write numbers (low tone and low fine motor skills means she can’t hold a pencil properly) by tracing the numbers with her finger, like the IWB, it gives her instant feedback.

That is just some of the uses for ICT that I have been so lucky to use, I have also been lucky to be part of the literacy program at the school.  They are doing Super Heroes and Super Villains, these group of students like their mainstream counterparts have been able to research their favourite characters using Google on the computers and print the ones they want to use for their project.  And most of all have been so lucky to have finally learned how to use BoardMaker© program and Cliker© programs, both fantastic in special schools. So, I cannot wait to finish university and get my own class one day to be able to apply all these wonderful things I have and continue to learn.

All new experience

So after already completing my first week of prac and almost coming to the end of the second week, as well as it being my 4th prac I just wanted to say that I am definitely following the right career for me. I love teaching and I want to make a difference in the classroom.  I have been so very fortunate of having some wonderful mentors through all of my practicums, this time not being any different in that regard.  The feedback I have received has been amazing and a real confidence boost.  On  the other hand, as with every piece of any equipment, not everything can always go to plan, this for me has been the very unlucky experience of not having a working interactive whiteboard.  I realise that some school are possibly managing not having an IWB in every classroom but all the classrooms that I have been lucky to have been a part of, have always had one to use.  I also realised that while I am fairly lucky to have a pretty good understanding of ICTs and I can adapt to different situation not everyone is like me, some people I heard a teacher say not long ago that Technology hated them and that if  anything was to go wrong it would always be her.  I was reading another students blog, in it Liz    the iage that we live in and the position our students take regarding technology as opposed to us who have had to learn this very complex at times way of doing everything using ICT.

This time the IWB is there but is not being interactive,  fortunately part of being a left brain dominant person who doesn’t overstress, I managed to rearrange some of my planned lessons to incorporate the IWB without it being interactive as well as adding some iPad time and other computer based activities.  The class students have been fantastic and we have managed to have very interactive and engaging lessons using the board regardless of it’s issues.  Yes it has been hard, but I can put it down to another experience of learning how to overcome problems that we have no control over what so ever, sometimes things go pear shape and they are not the end of the world, the thing is that life is not always perfect, it’s what we do with the situation and what we have to work with that makes the experience worth while.

 

Connect.ed Completed

I have finished the  four Connect.ed modules we were instructed to do, at first I was thinking was this really necessary, but after finishing, it really gave me something to think about.  As a parent and a pre-service teacher I felt that there was some very relevant information. The modules were well set up as different stages and in their relevant topics, while I thought I knew a lot about the internet and safety I realised that there is so much more to think about as an educator.  I agree with what Craig  says about module 1 being a “good reflection on the pressures young people face”.  The rest of the modules were a good and simple way of learning about cyber safety and the ways to deal with it.  I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my old and knew found knowledge to develop a mini unit about cyber safety. Here is my certificate of completion, which took many days to finish since life always seems to get in the way of studying at the moment.

ACMA certificate of completion

If only all students had the same expectations put on them….

I just came across this amazing blog by Dynamic Therapy Associates, Inc. and I needed to pass it on.  As part of this blog the writer talks about the social media view of people with disabilities, what a great way of putting it and what an eye opener, I had to sit back and reflect on this for a moment and realized that it is such a true statement.  And once again I am sucked in to another TED talk by an amazing woman, Stella Young, who talks about wanting to live in a world where disability is just part of the norm, I added this video because it really makes sense.

It is a very true point Stella makes, this is what motivates me and why I want to be an educator, so that my students, whom ever they may be, are just another student with the same expectations and possibilities as everyone regardless of their abilities.

What’s next?

Through the process of writing a unit plan that would not only support the Australian curriculum but also a class of children with high support needs, I feel somewhat better equipped to actually teach in a classroom with the element of ICT as a major part of the pedagogy.  As we get closer to Professional Experience all these questions start to arise, one of them and although I am assuming, like myself, some of us will be going to a return placement, it doesn’t change the fact that we don’t know the capabilities of each of the students, or what the actual teacher does with ICT in their classroom.

I liked the post by Maria  where she shares a couple of great webminars ideas relating to using different ICT in the classroom, I will be definitely looking into those.  Although they are still during our school week and this time of the term is crazy for everyone.  During the school holidays I have challenged myself to learn a new skill relating to ICT that I haven’t used before.  Assignment one gave me this opportunity as I used Prezi to complete it, so I think it’s time to find out about something else.

Let’s talk

So I was tagged in a blog by Maria and she asked for my opinion regarding the sometimes touchy subject of text talk.  Well, firstly I would like to thank Maria for asking for my opinion, I feel very privileged.  And here it is, I feel that the world has changed, how many of us remember that talking in person, via a telephone or writing letters were the only forms of communication.  Now days we have the technology to send emails, texts and social media just to name a few, it is still communication but it is instant, but that is not the question, text talk, is it affecting writing and grammar in the classroom?

I don’t think that text talk is affecting writing in the classroom anymore than actually using a laptop to take notes in class and having the spell check change your words when they are spelt wrongly.  I believe it is a form of effectively communicating with peers in a short hand form, I think it is more that we have a hard time understanding it and some are still trying to come to terms with technology altogether.  The main aim of any interaction between people is to communicate effectively and I think this “craze” does that.  I also agree with Maria when she brings up the Special needs student argument, some of these students rely on speech aids or communication devices, also some have the added physical impairments that may prevent movement, not to mention intellectual impairments. If these particular children can have a means of communicating, that does not include them having to come up with an entire sentence to make their point or make a request, then that is successful communication. Once again another great TED talk to add to our argument, I hope you have the time to watch it.

Inspiration

Through the past couple of weeks my research into the use of ICT in the classroom has taken me to different websites and led me to read others blogs. And as time consuming as having to blog a number of times a week has been, especially when life issues get in the way of study, it has been great to know that there are others who have similar thoughts and completely different ones to myself.  I like that people have challenged my ideas and made me take a deeper look at somethings and where I have thought I knew somethings, in some cases it turned out that I didn’t know as much as I thought.

I was just reading a post from fellow student Mason, I too have had a lot of family issues lately and fallen slightly behind, but what I liked about his blog was what he mentions about not only knowing about the technology available but also about how this technology needs to be used.  While doing my research for the assignment we are currently working on I came across this video from ACARA: ” An integrated approach”.  It is a class of special needs students with a real life teacher.

What an inspiration!

 

iPads for everyone

Once again through my many hours of researching and just getting lost in the fantastic blogs that people write I came across this blog. It is written by a Speech therapist whom I have been very lucky to have met personally at a PD and she is part of Spectronics.  This particular blog talks about the use of iPads in the classroom, the good thing about it is that, and as I have mentioned many times before, it is a great tool for special needs students but it also highlights the use of the iPad in the mainstream classroom.  We have used iPads in the classroom for a long time now and see the benefits on a daily basis, I am very excited by the prospect that more students can benefit from these devices.  It also gives some great ideas of some of the apps that would be useful and a small review about them.

This video shows an iPad being used in the classroom

 

I was just reading a blog by Maria, a fellow student where she mentions that she has heard and read a lot about EndNote. I was talking to our school tech and he was also explaining to me all about the benefits of EndNote, and a tech he cannot understand why it is not used by our state education department.
I then wondered about what we bring to our students, if diplomats can keep us from advancing forward because perhaps they don’t fully understand all the benefits of technology, are we at risk of doing the same thing to our students? I think that through the processes of this course that were engaging in, I have been able to look deeper into the things that I probably haven’t fully understood in the past and not even looked into due to that fact. It goes back to that mentality that we won’t even look at things that we don’t think we will understand, regardless of being told of its benefits. Imagine if we all looked further into the benefits of things that are ”too hard” the things we would find.