Mrs. Freddy's Practical EdTech

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...