Whetzel,+Cynthia+Lea-Closing+Reflection

1. Since attending this professional development I have come to see new literacies as the use of technology tools to teach what used to be done by traditional media (books, magazines, encyclopedia). I see this as a change in educational instruction that will help students be productive in the 21st century as more and more of what we do will be done through the virtual world.

2. Some of the new literacies I learned this week was the PBI process and the SCIM-C historical inquiry process. Some of the cool Web 2.0 tools that I learned about were Animoto, Livebinder, Glogster, Prezi, and Twitter. I had heard of Livebinder, but never used it, but see it as a tool that can be used for my student portfolios. I had previously dabbled with Glogster, Prezi, and Twitter but did not really use them. I want to learn more about Prezi and Twitter to use with my students. ( I bought Twitter for Dummies when we were in Raleigh)

3. I see technology and new literacies as intertwined. Students are living in a digital world today--they get their information from some form of technology, be it computer software, e-books, internet and as teachers we must adapt to that method of instruction. If we are to engage students in our classroom we must be able to compete with the "pizazz" of technology. For our students to learn in today's world we must use the delivery method which they are most comfortable with. For some teachers this will be a challenge as they feel inadequate in their use of technology. As I learned this past week many of the Cool Tools are not difficult to use and you do not need to try everything at once. Just using one tool can "jazz" up your lesson and the students.

4. The new literacies make us have to find new ways to deliver our content. As a history teacher I can no longer just give students notes through lecture and expect them to be engaged or retain what has been thrown at them on the board. I see history as being a content area that lends itself to easily incorporating new literacies and technology into its curriculum. Many of the tools we examined this week allow students to be the historian--they find the information, with a little guidance, and then make the connections to history and to current events. All of the tools involve some type of writing process which is essential to all common core standards.

5. As teachers we have to be willing to change our old methods of teaching to meet the new literacies. As I mentioned in question 3, some teachers are reluctant to change and incorporate technology into their teaching because they feel inadequate. Some teachers will need to be gently "moved" into the new literacies, while others will want to incorporate everything they are exposed to all at once. One thing I learned this week is that it is easy to get caught up in the incorporation of cool tools into lessons. As we developed our PBI I found that you don't have to overload with technology, just use what fits your lesson the best. If you are doing an inquiry with SCIM-C it would be useful to have a discussion forum available for students, but if you are looking at elements of a poem you might want to use something like Prezi.

6. My personal perspective on new literacies and the frameworks is that each of them are essential to incorporating new literacies into teaching. We are a global world, sharing a global economy. We need to teach our students the inquiry process rather than just disseminate facts to them. Students today (workers tomorrow) need to be problem solvers. As teachers we need to know our content of course, but we need to be able to adapt our delivery to meet the needs of the learners--this means changing the pedagogical approach and incorporating technology at all levels and curriculum areas of instruction. To reach our global world we need to know how to get our ideas and solutions to to others. This incorporates the importance of establishing an online identity and being able to make the global connections through cultural awareness.

7. The Design studio work we did helped me to see the connection between PBI, the new Bloom's cognitive process and the creative process. I found that learning is more meaningful when you are actively engaged in the process and that it requires you to incorporate a number of skills as you complete your inquiry. I found that the creative process involves using higher order skills such as analyzing and evaluating in order to create a product. Through this process it helps lead you into thinking beyond the project and into further investigation of the topic.

8. To futher my online identity I have become more involved in using Twitter (bought the book for dummies) and have joined Linkedin. I had previously created a blog through Weebly to use with my AP students and parents and plan to get more involved with this in the coming school year. I will continue to use Edmodo with my students as a means of communication and delivery of assignments, but I want to venture more into podcasting and blogging with students this year.

9. If I had one more day in the institute (and I wish we had), I would like to have more in-depth instruction on the Web 2.0 cool tools with opportunities to try them out. The carousel was good, but we did not have enough time or exposure to enough tools. Dr. Beach provided us with some great tools for iPads and iPhones, but it would have been nice to get a chance to have more "play" time with all the tools we were exposed to. By having a chance for some "hands-on" time, we could get more comfortable with the tools and be better equipped to take our knowledge back to our colleagues.