We started the day with partner discussions about what we've learned or ideas we've come up with through the course of the class thus far. Most said stuff along the lines that they didn't know there were so many ways to use technology in education with some people saying it's left them feeling overwhelmed. I suggested for those folks to take my own approach to integrating new tech: focus on adding in one new "thing" (whether that's a new site, a new program, etc.) for a period of time (perhaps for a week, month, term, or year depending on it's complexity).
For myself, I've been able to experiment with a few tech topics I've always wanted to try but haven't had the time for it (ex. creating quizzes through GoogleForms and then setting up the student response spreadsheet to grade for me). I've also greatly enjoyed being able to share my "techspertise" and some of my favorite resources with others.
After a short break, my Davis colleague Heather C. and I both shared some sites that can help with integrating different graphic organizers. I started off with Popplet, a tool for the iPad and web that not only allows you to create organizers but to also share and collaborate on them. Heather shared the resources from ReadWriteThink, which has other resources in addition to graphic organizers. Mrs. Burnes shared two sites of her own as well, Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers (one of the PDF organizers we were able to use to help with our unit plan presentation) and Cool Tools for Schools, which has loads of other resources I'll be looking back on for future use.
The rest of the day was devoted to working in our groups. My partners (fellow CCPS employees Heather C. and Kaleigh H.) and I have made a ton of progress with our unit plan for this class and we have components that each of us will be able to utilize in at least some part (some pieces entirely as is, others in part or with some modifications) during the next school year.
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