Podcast Development (CEP 800)

For my podcast project, I would like to interview students from my first grade classroom about their knowledge of coins and their values as well as how coins and combinations of coins can be "traded" for other coins of equal values. I would like to interview both boys and girls but realize with school coming to an end next week, that I need to get this done ASAP! Having taught first grade for numerous years, there are some confusions that I anticipate that my students may have. These could include...

• confusion about coin values
• confusion with coin recognition
• confusion with what "trading" coins might mean

My interviews will take place on Tuesday so that if an extra day is needed, or errors occur, there is time to get them corrected. I will look into the possibility of having someone cover my class, so that I may take the students I am going to interview to a quieter location where less distractions would occur.

Learning from 812 and Future Goals

Over the course of the past eight weeks, I once again have learned about, implemented, and added some new technologies into my teaching and learning toolbelt. I learned how to use and implement Garage band to create my first ever podcast and learned through trial and error, and then ultimately through a YouTube video, how to get that podcast to affix itself onto my blog. This was mostly due to the fact that the tutorials that were provided, did not seem to relate to my system platform or software programs that I was using and a sure sign that when creating a product with technology, the ways in which the same product can be produced or made is ultimately endless in nature simply due to the amount of software, information, and opportunities that are out there!

The end result of my group's SIG project, a website entitled Teachers and Tech Games, that focused on online learning games within four subject areas (Reading, Social Studies, Math, and Science) was a very useful and worthwhile project for me as this is a site that I will be able to share with others and access often. The overall look and design of this website is something to be proud of as well as it's ease in navigation for even a younger student who may need to access this site for an online learning game. It is my hope that many of these links remain active for a long time to come, as there are some fantastic sites that were found and annotated within this SIG project that ultimately became my favorite project within the 812 course.

Having now earned a "Certificate in Educational Technology" my learning has not stopped. I am going to continue on through this program until I have earned what will be my second master's degree, but my first one in educational technology. I will continue to find ways to solve real and relevant issues within my school, my teaching, and with my fellow colleagues through the use of technology as I continue to be a "cheerleader" for technology integration in my district, my school, and for my students who want and deserve a 21st century way of teaching and learning.

Project Evaluation

Given what I have learned through the process of my TechQuest, there are a couple of things that I would do differently. First of all, the timing of this project, although for the most part out of my control, was perhaps a large contributor to the fact that I had to go with a Plan B for my project implementation. This is because the overall project dealt with training teachers how to use a SMARTBoard, and because the end of the year is such a busy and hectic one for teachers who are beginning to wrap up a school year and are bogged down with meetings, testing, grades, and an overall feeling of needing to move from a sprint into an all-out run to the end of the year finish line, this is in general what caused me to run into a problem with getting teachers scheduled for the lesson that I had planned to do with them. And although I was concerned about what this would do to my ability to follow through with my TechQuest, ultimately my Plan B helped to make this TechQuest more powerful and stronger in it's delivery and overall success. This validated what I have always known and believed in as a teacher, which is "remain flexible" and I am thankful for the fact that I am able to keep a positive outlook on things even though they may not look how I had planned them to. And even though this project ended up working out to be very successful, I would still try to keep a close eye on the timing of a project such as this one especially with one that deals with gathering together a group of very busy teachers.

In the future, and as the Technology Facilitator in my building, opportunities such as this one will likely present themselves again. Knowing that, I will take a lot of learning from this TechQuest with me and will use what I have learned to choose, implement, and create topics that are engaging and relevant to the needs of my teachers in my building as well as to the students to whom those teachers are responsible for. This leads me to the second thing that I would change or consider for future projects like this. This time, this TechQuest topic was chosen because I felt there was a genuine need to get teachers some training on the use of SMARTBoards within my building, however, in the future, allowing teachers an opportunity to voice an opinion towards what they feel they are needing or lacking training or support in, would allow for an authentic interest in helping themselves and their students to learn 21st century ways of teaching and learning.