SoftAware

·      What software applications do you use regularly in your teaching practice? 

I felt mighty proud the other day.  That doesn't happen often because I think I'm a pretty ordinary person and ordinary people just feel ordinary most of the time.  BUT, today students were creating projects using the computers.  One group had several questions that I was actually able to answer.  After one answer, a student stated, "Wow, Ms. Orner, you, like, know everything."  Now, let me just say, I don't hear this very often.  I teach 3 subjects in middle school, which means, let's be honest (that's what I do), I'm not exactly an "expert" in all of them.  I teach. I'm not like, "the English person" or "the math person" or "that geography girl."  I'm "that middle school teacher."  And I like it that way.  When my students ask me questions about this, I tell them I only teach because I care that they learn about life.  In reality, Math, English, and Geography are great, but what I really get excited about is teaching greater life truths through those avenues. 

Getting back to the point. Even though my students aren't exactly technology gurus, I was thankful that, because of this wonderful "Technology in Education" class, I could help my students. They were really impressed with the whole "Creative Commons" business. In today's assignment one group was creating a glog and the others were working on PowerPoints.  The students had made glogs once before and fell in love with its cutsey creativity.  On a project about community, one student made a Christmas theme.  When asked why she used Christmas trees as her background, she responded, "Well, people like to get together with family and friends at Christmas time, so it's like community." I have such clever students.  Another one had some Nintendo characters as the background, but that explanation, or lack thereof, wasn't quite on the same level :)

If I had summarize what applications I use regularly in my classes, it would have to be narrowed the following:

- PowerPoint: I use them for the rare lecture to teach students how to take notes. Students also use them for projects.

- Wikispaces: I'm working on making this one more regular and beneficial, but it pops up in class often.

- Glogster: I use it as a project option for my students

- Microsoft Word: It's great for essays and, well, essays.

- Microsoft Excel: Once a year my math class pulls it out to make cool graphs.

- Youtube: self explanatory, I think.

- Allrecipes.com: Not sure if this counts, but when we have culture days in Geography, I use it to find recipes for the food I make.

- Grooveshark: It's great for motivating students to be quiet and listen to the music :)

Now the true colors of my knowledge are shown when I admit that I don't know how many of the items I listed are actually software applications.

·      What other software skills would you like to improve to increase your professional efficacy?  

Facebook. I want to teach the students to start their own fake protest (within the school) and spread their message to other students without using word of mouth. Unfortunately, Facebook is blocked here...I don't know why. [Long side note insert: At my school among the teachers we have a "Sarcasm Sign."  It's not actually a sign, one simply has to hold up the hands as if holding a sign.  This arm motion indicates that the speaker is using sarcasm...'cuz sometimes it's hard to tell (I think we got this from "Big Bang Theory").  Here I hold up a Sarcasm Sign about the comments above, just in case you couldn't catch the tone. End long side note]. After my experiment with Prezi, I'm not sure if I can add that to my list of skills I want to improve, unless improve means the outcome is at least two times better and the process at least ten times faster.  I suppose I should say that I want to work on making a podcast, but I don't, and that's that.  Even though I use it now, I would really like to improve the use of Wikispaces to make it more effective and engaging for the students.  Right now it is mostly being used as an avenue for them to see each others' work and for me to post documents that the students can view at home.

·      Propose an action plan to improve these skills.  

Ok, as long as I don't have to write a goal :)  My action plan (if you are reading and aren't interested in education, skip this part. It is serious and NOT funny, and thus boring unless you like to know what teachers do to improve their lessons with software applications):

In my next English unit in 7th grade the students will be reading "Crispin: the Cross of Lead."  As an introduction to this unit, students research 14th century England so they can understand the setting of the book. I want to research ways to use Wikispaces effectively and view example wikis for inspiration.

BORING PART OVER.