(disclaimer - I’m not a natural writer, so view the following as a way of thanking everyone involved in getting me started with this)
I’m a deaf science teacher teaching deaf students. I also am someone who is finally jumping/catching up to the world of reflective blogging. I was getting tired of the same old thing and realized I was falling into the trap of getting comfortable as a teacher. At the time, I had started getting into Twitter thanks to @jbrtva and Cybraryman's online library which led me to #edchats and #scichats. Talking with other teachers got me revved up and wanting to make change. After all, I wanted to be an Innovative Educator and not just someone who regurgitates facts which is what I felt like I was doing nowadays. Sure, the kids improved in their learning, but it wasn’t sticking. It wasn’t long term learning.
So I thought it was time to Tech the Plunge. I started looking for ways to improve. Three things about me -- I teach science, I love technology, and I love free stuff. This combination led me to Free Technology For Teachers. This just blew away my mind and how much I had been missing out on -- more importantly, how much my students had been missing out on. So I started tagging like crazy and finding stuff for students to do. However, this tag list became cumbersome. While the websites and programs I was directed to were beneficial, I realized again I was looking for facts to spout.
It became evident to me (finally) that we live in an Information Age (or Digital Age) where we can just put in a search for any information we want. So I don’t want to waste time on facts. I was talking about this on Twitter with other teachers and this led me to start thinking, what do I really want students to learn? Science skills such as how to inquire, how to find info, how to research, how to test ideas, and so on. With these as my guiding principles, I was able to pinpoint what I was looking for and became more focused in my searches.
As I was sharing these ideas and thoughts with others, such as @ccarman602, @Brunsell, @gardenglen, they also suggested I check out Standards Based Grading (SBG). This will help me to evaluate students better and gear students towards what is important about learning. But I’ll save the SBG stuff for another post later.
All this Think, Thank, Thunking had me overwhelmed with so much information and trying to process it all, that I realized I needed to start reflecting/journaling more so that I can internalize the information better. I learn & remember better (don’t we all?) when I am able to explain to myself (and anyone else who happens to be listening/reading) what I’m learning. Isn’t this what we want for students too!?! So it was time for me to start typing all this stuff down in a blog. And so here we are today with my first Action-Reaction blog post. It took some time to come up with a name for my blog, but I wanted to reflect deafness and science in the title. I thought of using Signing Science but it was too similar to a couple others I knew about. I didn't want to be a copycat, but a Cool Cat type of teacher. So after confirming with a few people if they liked the title, it now stands proudly at the top of this blog. Here’s to a journey I look forward to (I think)....
I’m a deaf science teacher teaching deaf students. I also am someone who is finally jumping/catching up to the world of reflective blogging. I was getting tired of the same old thing and realized I was falling into the trap of getting comfortable as a teacher. At the time, I had started getting into Twitter thanks to @jbrtva and Cybraryman's online library which led me to #edchats and #scichats. Talking with other teachers got me revved up and wanting to make change. After all, I wanted to be an Innovative Educator and not just someone who regurgitates facts which is what I felt like I was doing nowadays. Sure, the kids improved in their learning, but it wasn’t sticking. It wasn’t long term learning.
So I thought it was time to Tech the Plunge. I started looking for ways to improve. Three things about me -- I teach science, I love technology, and I love free stuff. This combination led me to Free Technology For Teachers. This just blew away my mind and how much I had been missing out on -- more importantly, how much my students had been missing out on. So I started tagging like crazy and finding stuff for students to do. However, this tag list became cumbersome. While the websites and programs I was directed to were beneficial, I realized again I was looking for facts to spout.
It became evident to me (finally) that we live in an Information Age (or Digital Age) where we can just put in a search for any information we want. So I don’t want to waste time on facts. I was talking about this on Twitter with other teachers and this led me to start thinking, what do I really want students to learn? Science skills such as how to inquire, how to find info, how to research, how to test ideas, and so on. With these as my guiding principles, I was able to pinpoint what I was looking for and became more focused in my searches.
As I was sharing these ideas and thoughts with others, such as @ccarman602, @Brunsell, @gardenglen, they also suggested I check out Standards Based Grading (SBG). This will help me to evaluate students better and gear students towards what is important about learning. But I’ll save the SBG stuff for another post later.
All this Think, Thank, Thunking had me overwhelmed with so much information and trying to process it all, that I realized I needed to start reflecting/journaling more so that I can internalize the information better. I learn & remember better (don’t we all?) when I am able to explain to myself (and anyone else who happens to be listening/reading) what I’m learning. Isn’t this what we want for students too!?! So it was time for me to start typing all this stuff down in a blog. And so here we are today with my first Action-Reaction blog post. It took some time to come up with a name for my blog, but I wanted to reflect deafness and science in the title. I thought of using Signing Science but it was too similar to a couple others I knew about. I didn't want to be a copycat, but a Cool Cat type of teacher. So after confirming with a few people if they liked the title, it now stands proudly at the top of this blog. Here’s to a journey I look forward to (I think)....
