In Less Than 30 Minutes I Discovered....

A tweet from Eric Sheninger saying, "To build powerful relationships with all learners:
1. Love your kids more than the subject you teach and/or the grade level you work with.
2. Use feedback and positive reinforcement as the main learning motivator, not grades or marks.
3. Be empathetic."  I really liked Eric's tweet because it is very important to build powerful relationships with your students.  Building relationships with your students gives them a sense of trust in you as their teacher.  Giving feedback and positive reinforcement to your students gives them the motivation that they are able to achieve more than they think they can, which will most likely get them excited about learning your content.  If you are empathetic towards your students they will also get that sense of compassion from you, which also makes them trust you.
https://twitter.com/E_Sheninger/status/987707182115426304


Steven Anderson tweeted a link about blogging about the WEB 2.0 connected classroom.  (http://bit.ly/2ILO3tZ ).  For this website provided there are several things to consider when looking for technology use in the classroom.  One suggestion was always remember your purpose.  This means does the purchase align with the mission and goals of the district?  Does it support attainment of the discipline standards, ISTE Standards, and learning targets?  Another suggestion was keep the students as the center, meaning have a differentiated classroom, inclusive classroom and accessibility options. I will make sure to have a classroom where the students are the center and pick technology that focuses on students.  An important suggestion is to keep data safe and secure.  I will make sure that the technology is secure and safe for students to use.


George Couros had a quote that says, "We forget that if students leave school less curious than when they started, we have failed them."  I like this quote because it makes you want to teach your students things to get their minds wondering and get thinking about what you taught them.  If they leave school forgetting everything they learned that day then you would have to start over the next day basically and fall behind in your teaching.  Making your students curious is a good thing because it makes them continue thinking about topics and maybe they can research it themselves at home and learn more before school the next day.
https://twitter.com/gcouros/status/1049993195759628289

What I Learned About RSS

From RSS feeds, I discovered how to set up effective group work.  I read the article Setting Up Effective Group Work and I found it very informative.  The beginning of the article says how group work can be messy, which is agreeable.  It can be difficult for your students to feel involved when working in groups because some students take over leaving others left out of the work.  Rather than making your students do group projects, there are a few tips about what to do instead to make students feel more motivated and involved.

One tip that was eye opening was that you need to ask yourself if the assignment they are doing needs to be done in group work.  If the work doesn't break down equally, then maybe you should consider something else.  Another tip I liked a lot was using a digital tool.  There are three online tools; Mural, MindMeister, and Stormboard.  Using one of these digital tools for group brainstorming is a great help in keeping all students feel involved and motivated in their group work.  They are able to each add their own ideas whenever they want and everyone has a part in the assignment.  I will be using this in my classroom so students are able to work individually at their desks and collaborate all that they have done once everyone finished.



Jeff Knutson, Setting Up Effective Group Work. 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/setting-effective-group-work?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29

PLN- Why?

A PLN is a group of learners who collaborate and share to obtain inspirations, ideas, and trade some of their best practices.  Teachers can share lesson plans, attend workshops, and learn things from other teachers.

What I hope to gain from my PLN is learning about different high-impact teaching strategies.  I want to be able to stay up-to-date on educational research and technological research as well as the trends.

Technology topics that I find interesting are blogs, I like reading blogs about different teaching strategies and how to be a good teacher.  An educational topics that interests me is classroom management because every teacher has a different way of managing their classroom and you can always learn from other teachers.

Some goals I want to set for myself are practicing different technological tools to better my teaching. I want to expand my knowledge on blog posts, I think it would be useful to create my own blog after this class to write and post about things I might think are helpful for other teachers.