Monday, July 23, 2012
Class 7/20 Reflection
I attended the 2nd National Convening of Woodrow
Wilson Teaching Fellows—Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellows: Changing the
Educational Landscape that was held Thursday and Friday of last week. Fellows from all over the country attended
this event. The first night Arthur
Levine, President The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation was the
keynote speaker. He spoke on the rapidly
changing technological society in which we live and the need to impart skills
in future generations that will continue the momentum. The next morning we heard from author and
educator Dr. Sonia Nieto who spoke on her book, What Keeps Teachers Going in
Spite of Everything. She spoke about a
group of educators on which the book was based and how, in addition to their
backgrounds, each one of them has a unique and personal motive that drives them
to continue in a profession that is not given the respect that it deserves. Following
this session, I had to choose 1 out of 27 different seminars to attend for the
morning session. The seminar I chose to
attend was titled, “Tech Savvy Teachers & Teens: Using Technology in the
Classroom.” There were a couple of other
technology seminars being offered, however this particular session was the only
one that I found that did not cover something that we have already covered or
will be covering in EDUC 504. I enjoyed
this seminar tremendously. Words cannot
express that enough. It was very
enlightening. Some of the main sites
featured in this session included edmodo.com – a site that is used to publish
lesson plans, homework assignments, quizzes, grades, and that allows one-on-one
interaction between student and teacher and wallwisher.com – a way to post
comments/feedback anonymously. Another
site that was highlighted included donorschoose.org this site is where teachers
can write up proposals and grants for the purpose of soliciting needed items
for their classroom, interested donors access the site and help fulfill the
need when possible. After lunch I
attended another seminar that was on Standardized Mathematic Tests. The seminar covered test taking techniques. The last afternoon session involved Q & A
of a panel of 3 current fellows. The
fellows shared their most embarrassing experiences that occurred during their
student/1st year teaching as well as how to manage the stress of working
in an urban school and having a life outside of work. It was a rewarding days and a half of
networking and learning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I hope that you are able to share some of these other sites (the ones that you don't have names for), I'm always interested in finding new tech-savy sites :)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Donor's choose, you should really check out we-search.org (started by a young man, who happens to be my older brother). It is a similar site for crowd funding, and through this site you can fund small and local research organizations or upload your own to accept funding! Great sites like these help people stay in touch with causes that closely affect them, and you are able to track what your donation is helping to fund.
I mention this not only because it is similar to Donor's choose, but because it shows what innovative things you can do with technology after attending the University of Michigan! My brother Chris went here, and now he's moved on to such great things! I think that with this course, and with supplemental courses like yours, we can use technology for great things in our classrooms :)
Hi Lakeza. This was really cool--I am glad that you shared your experience at the Convening of the Woodrow Wilson fellows. How awesome! I thought it was really interesting that you attended the seminar about Teens and Technology--so relevant to our 504 class. I don't know if your mentor teacher at Scarlett uses edmodo.com, but my mentor teacher, Ms. Hurst, uses it all the time. That is how she get's in touch with is every day is through edmodo and it is pretty cool. I haven't quite figured out all of its advantages (and/or disadvantages) but I know that she would tell us that it operated like Facebook for the classroom, which obviously all of us could relate to.
ReplyDeleteI wondered out of curiosity...what were some of the other 27 seminars?! Were there some that you wished you could have gone to but didn't? Or if there was an additional one that you could attend, which one would you choose?
Lastly, I am so jealous of the panel discussion that you got to attend at the end of your day. I would love to listen to stories about some other teacher's first year teaching--especially the ones that didn't go so well! I think that this would really put me at ease and help calm some of my fears, even about student teaching in the fall. Some days I am so nervous about getting up in front of all those high schoolers, but I know that it will only be a matter of time before I am used to it. Were there any stories that were super prominent to you, or super memorable? I would be curious to hear them :)
Tools like Edmodo and Wallwisher would make great topics for your fall webinar or winter professional article for this class! Glad it was a great experience to be out of town, but we're also glad you're back!
ReplyDeleteI like the post summarizing your experience at the WWTF conference. Thanks for sharing the input from your experience. I know your immersed in all of the reading, learning, etc., and this had to be one more major load of information being delivered to you.
ReplyDeleteA break will be coming soon!