Mrs. Freddy's Practical EdTech

                      via GIPHY Who? How? Where? Great questions to ask about all the student data that has to be input, stored, and protected in schools today.  As the education system has moved to electronic records and data storage, some schools have had to make decisions about who, how, and where all the data will be stored. The best way to do all those things easily is to use a student information system (SIS). This varies in schools, districts, and states immensely. There are many SISs to choose from. Some schools may have the choice to use what they think is best, while others may have to use whatever their district office decides on. Others may be required to use a system that the whole state has established.  I know that in my district we have to use the state's choice of SIS. I feel like that is a good decision because some students may move schools and this helps with transferring records. We also had a recent c...

                         via GIPHY That's what we are talking about here. Public schools get a lot of money to spend each year. A lot of this money is in the form of grants. The problem is that someone has to decide how to spend it while also making sure to follow guidelines laid out by the district or state. This is not an easy job and it may need to be a team effort. Making these decisions needs to be considered carefully with a well thought-out plan.  There are two basic types of grants that are available: entitlement grants and competitive grants. Entitlement grants include Title I, Title VI, and Eisenhower funds. Schools that qualify for Title I grants must have high numbers of low-income families. The best thing about these grants is that there are so many options of how the money can be used. Each school can use these funds to purchase supplies, instructional materials, programs, and technology.  Technol...

I know how most teachers feel about professional development. Ugh! In my experience as a teacher, I've been given a lot of tools, software, devices, programs. You name it and I probably have a teacher account that my district has provided. What is lacking is the training in how to use all of them or even most of them. So many times, teachers are sent tutorial videos to watch on their own time when given something new to learn. Other times, teachers have to teach themselves or find videos online to learn things. Something that I have noticed is that training is given for things that teachers do not even use on a daily basis. We have to change this. As a future technology coordinator, I want to make it a mission to provide training for teachers often and make sure that it will actually be relevant. Teachers do not want to feel like their time is wasted on training for "nothing." This means that leaders need to get input from teachers on what they need and what will be the...

This whole idea of Instructional Coaching is something new to me. I had never heard of it until recently. I knew of mentor teachers but that is not exactly the same thing. Instructional coaching requires a relationship that is trusting and honest. It will be one where all people involved will benefit. The video below is a brief overview of what instructional coaching needs to be.              After reading chapter four of The Impact Cycle , I feel that making a checklist will be a great starting point for the coaching process. I will be coaching a veteran teacher. We have discussed that she wants to get more student engagement for the whole class period. Her struggle is with the use of technology in meaningful ways that provide the engagement she wants. I use checklist for myself in other ways all the time. Knight et. al (2018) says, "Checklists help a coach remember everything by providing a clear structure and map for explaining the teach...

It is important to start by saying that I am new to the idea of instructional coaching. We don't have what you would call Instructional Coaches in my district. I guess you could consider some of the teachers working at the district office to be instructional coaches. They are what we call Resource Teachers. These select few work in all different departments and are available to educate teachers in anything new that comes through. I would say that is kind of my dream job, to teach teachers. With my master's degree in technology, I would love to be able to help other teachers find and use technology in meaningful ways. The video below talks about coaching teachers to do just that.                I feel like all teachers engage in coaching and mentoring with each other on a daily basis. We stand around and talk about students, good and bad. We bounce ideas off of each other and may even decide to try some of those ideas. It could be som...

  Why do we need to use Instructional Design?  We have all been to many professional developments (PDs) in our careers. Most of the time we sit there listening to someone lecture for hours and leave feeling like we learned nothing. This is why we need Instructional Design. This helps the teacher/presenter to know what materials will be the best to make the learners achieve their goals. Brown and Green (2020) say, " it includes development of instructional materials and activities, and tryout and evaluation of all instruction and learner activities." (p. 7). So, what can we do to make sure our own teaching follows a good design? Here are some tips to making your instruction successful. In this process, I have learned more about the need to plan your instruction. In writing an outline and thinking about what the needs are it has helped me to understand how to implement instruction that will be meaningful now and in the future. Brown and Green (2020) say, " it is good pract...

  As educators we all dread the words Professional Development (PD). It is just something that makes teachers feel as if they have wasted valuable time that could have been used for something else. As long as students' needs and experiences keep changing, we will still need to engage in PD to learn the tools to connect with them. According to Weidenseld and Bashevis (2013), "teachers report a lack of respect from district personnel in regard to their time and their opinions about PD. (p. 105)." They go on to say that "empowering teachers to select the types of PD and compensating them for time outside the workday would help improve teacher attitudes and participation. (p. 105)."  In the video below, Eric Sheninger says we have to change to meet the students where they are.              First off, I think that learning can occur with so many different resources and in a lot of different places. There is no one right way to learn or to ...

Thinking back on this last year in education, it has been a crazy, mixed up experience for all. I was only in my first full year of teaching (I had started in the middle of the year before), when the Covid 19 pandemic shutdown happened. I don't follow much news and so, the whole thing came somewhat of a surprise to me. I was planning out the end of the year and just thinking about how to finish out the year. Like everyone else, my district shutdown very quickly with the intent to reopen in 3 weeks after our Spring Break. We all know that did not happen.  The district had to plan out a way to finish out the year in a big hurry. We had paper packets and gave out any device we could to accommodate. Students without internet access were provided with hotspots in hopes that they would work. The district had the infrastructure within the schools to provide access but the students did not have that at home. The reality of the socioeconomic differences throughout our district was made very...

In my college career, I have taken fully in person courses, hybrid courses, and fully online courses. My experience with online courses has been a relatively good one. I enjoy the freedom to complete assignments when I can and not needing to meet in person. I would say that the best thing about online learning is having the ability to complete an entire degree without leaving my house. Something that sticks out as the best experience I've had in all my online learning has been learning about using Learning Management Systems (LMS). I could not have known that my training would be put into place so quickly. The Covid pandemic put my skills to use last year in the most real world experience. I had to teach other educators at my school how to set up their own Google Classrooms and upload assignments. I was able to be a leader in my field. With no experience in teaching an entirely online course, we all fell into the trap of "'dumping' Face-to-Face coursework onto the web....

I currently teach special education at a very large middle school. We have a big department with lots of teachers and paraprofessionals. This means we have to communicate lots of information to a lot of people and do it correctly. In my time in this position, I have been able to observe the ways in which our department leaders communicate with employees. Some have been an example of great communication and some have not. It is a good way for me to learn how to do what is needed in a leadership role to build that environment that encourages team communication. "Managers and researchers have long agreed that communication processes influence the organizational success" (Krywalski, p. 71).  I know from my studies and reading that taking a leadership role often means that those you lead are apprehensive about communicating their grievances due to fear of losing their position. At the same time, for the leader, it can be a lonely role when you may be the only one in that position....

This year has created many opportunities to connect with people in new ways. This has been especially true in the field of education. "Educators must be experts in effective communication techniques, especially when it comes to parents and other key stakeholders." (Sheninger, p. 169). For me personally, I would have never dreamed that I would need to be in contact with parents and students as much as I have this school year. I'll just say that I'm not an expert, but I have learned a lot about effective communication throughout this pandemic year.  When schools shut down in March 2020, I had to immediately begin calling, texting, emailing parents and students daily. It was not something that had been done quite so often. I set up a Google Voice account so that I could text students and parents without using my personal number. This helped me let students contact me with questions easily and send me assignments through pictures.  At the beginning of this school year, we...

For this blog, I was tasked with reading a book entitled Teach Boldly  by Jennifer Williams. This was not my first choice for books, but I was interested in getting some ideas after reading the description. In my opinion, the book centered around the themes of social justice and equity in education. Williams goes into detail about how to achieve these things through using educational technology. I enjoyed the different examples of what she had been introduced to. In particular, Chapter 3 is titled The Human-Centered Learning Environment. This chapter described a plan created after Google did a diversity analysis within their own company. They realized that their company was not as diverse as they thought and they wanted to help change that. To tackle the problem, they decided that they needed to start at the beginning -- in schools. This was the birth of the Google Code Next lab in Oakland, California. It was centrally located in a diverse neighborhood and help students from local ...

Social media has become one of the most essential aspects of our lives today. We use social media to connect with friends and family. We use it to connect with other professionals in our fields. Our students use it daily to talk to all their friends the same way that we wrote notes back and forth between classes when I was in school. This is why we have to start teaching them how to be safe and learn to find quality information at a very young age. Arguments on social media can be used for good or bad and it's up to the reader to make sure that they get the right information. Most educators do not consider the possibility of actually using social media to teach their students how to argue online effectively and appropriately. The question is how do we decide what is the most accurate information we read when following these arguments.  For example, I like to follow several different news sources to distinguish between the stories and how they are covered by the different sources. W...

I have made quite a few introduction videos in my time as a college student and teacher. Almost all of them are made with the same type of quality and aspects. Below is an example of one that was made only a couple of months ago for a college course.  The task I was most recently given was to re-evaluate my video and make changes or make a new video. I did some reading and a little research in preparation of being able to improve upon my original. As I was watching this original video, I began to realize just how much better it could have been. As you can see, there are no transitions and a boring background scene and no sounds. Hicks says that things to consider when editing should include: narration, panning and zooming, repetition, time effects, film effects, transitions, sound effects and music, captions and text. (2013) Below you can compare my newest version of my introduction.    As you can see, I added a fade in and out to make the beginning and end lo...

I cannot remember the first time I encountered an infographic. I'm sure it was even before the internet made them popular. We have been using infographics for years to share information. You can read about a history of infographics here . The idea of sharing information through pictures is definitely not new. We have been using images on posters, TV screens, and computers for years now. All this leads me to think that humans respond well to seeing visuals. We already know that some people are visual learners. Just think of the benefits of instruction with infographics to those students in your class.  The web-based world we live in now has so many ways to make this an easy task to complete. We can now research, plan, and create infographics in very little time. We can put out surveys to colleagues or students to collect our own data. Teachers need to now begin teaching students how to compose their own infographics. The ways in which students could use infographics to be assessed i...

I was born in 1981. The days of Polaroid cameras were in full swing. As a kid, taking those pictures that developed almost instantly, with a little shake, was so exciting. The fad died out in the 90s and we moved back to regular film that had to be developed over several days. It was not until after I was out of high school that digital cameras came around. The best part was being able to see if your picture looked good right away, instead of having to take film to a store and wait two weeks for it to be developed. With the invention of digital cameras, came a great rise to the opportunity of how things could be placed on the Internet. We could see our pictures instantly and, in essence, delete them if we did not like them. This all gave rise to social media and what has become a huge part of our everyday lives.  Today, people post pictures on social media and websites throughout the day. Naturally, when I began reading  Argument in the Real World , I found it very interesting...