I live in Doylestown, PA with my husband and 3 children. I have a son at Penn State and a daughter at the University of Pittsburgh. I also have a son who graduated from Penn State and has a full-time job. I worked in finance and business for a number of years before starting my teaching career. I teach at CB South High School in the Central Bucks School District. I teach Personal Finance and several technology classes. I love teaching at the high school and the kids in our district are terrific. I am currently enrolled at Wilkes as a graduate student in Instructional Technology. This is my fifth class in the program.
Week 1 - Sustaining Digital Literacy blog questions I find many of teaching resources from the school districts website on staff professional development. The district has links to PA Business standards and CBSD course standards-based objectives. The district also has links to sample formative and summative assessments. We also focus on implementing strategies and lessons that promote growth mind-set, deepening learning and how to give effective feedback. I also use an online lesson planning system from the National Economic Financial Literacy program. (NEFE resources) The resources are free and provide up-to-date financial literacy content. I like using the NEFE resources because they updated their entire system with strategies for financial well-being based on economic changes since the 2008 Financial crisis.
I also review current financial websites - CNN Money, Yahoo Finance for articles and video on current events. I also reach out to the community and business owners who would like to participate in our class discussions and learning modules. I've had guest speakers, Skype interviews and email and chat interviews. The challenges that I face have to do with timely access to outside resources. A lesson or activity on Investing or the stock market often needs to be changed as our economic situation changes. I also run into our district blocking access for students to financial websites and our district is very cautious with the use of technology. We are not usually front runners in allowing students to try new technologies.
EDIM516 – Week 1 Reflection
I enjoyed working this week on the blog for this class. I haven't used a blog in a year and had an
opportunity to make adjustments to the blog I use for Wilkes classes. I changed the background colors, text titles
and links. I also had an opportunity to
respond to comments placed on my blog by classmates. I only used the discussion reply at the
Wilkes site previously. I also thought
that Blackboard collaborate was a very interesting way to view the recorded session
on Tuesday, June 26th. I was
not able to view the session that evening but I did the next day.
I also enjoyed watching the video from Linda Yollis on
Engaging in Civil discourse. She had
several very good ideas about how students should use social media and
commenting. The Prezi presentation on
content curation was interesting also on making sense of all the
information available on the Internet.
It is overwhelming to try to determine what Internet resources are the
most useful for students as well as teachers.
I am so interested in school filtering. I wonder what new technologies your school has blocked in the past. I taught at a technology camp this week and was exited to start a Twitter chat using the camp's hashtag. I found out that morning that the hosting school district blocked Twitter. They put the filter up that morning! It was so frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI understand that certain social media sites can be distracting to students, but it really has become an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation. We should harness the power of social media to engage 21st century learners.
Hi,
DeleteI liked the video on teaching students social etiquette for commenting. What did you think of it?
I experienced a difficulty with our filtering system this year. All of the videos stored on my google drive through the school were unable to be viewed internally because they were blocked by our filter. The reason was that they were on an unreliable format. Google. That our school was supporting. All of them had to be uploaded to youtube so they would play inside the school. There are a lot of challenges that we are facing due to the system put into place. But we are all moving through it slowly.
ReplyDeleteWow! Hopefully you figured out the work-around in time for when you needed to show the videos to your class.
DeleteHello! I am sorry, but I can't find your name on your blog. I am probably staring right at it! Anyhow, I am right up the road at CB East (math). It is funny how our perspectives are a bit different in the same district, but different schools! While I agree we are not at the forefront of technology, I feel the principals at East seem to promote technology like crazy. We have BYOD (bring your own device), which I don't buy into just yet because, in the math classroom, it is causing more distraction than engagement in the lesson. I have to be better at my design for it to really work. Anyhow, I feel your frustration with the blocked sites. I sometimes find the perfect applet to use, and it is blocked on the student laptops. Extremely frustrating! Anyhow, nice to see you in this class!
ReplyDeleteLaura Domzalski
Laura,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Shirley Kutz. Nice to meet you. I didn't write my name on the blog. I guess I'm still figuring out how this stuff works.