STEM

This class has taught me so much.  I am very happy to have taken the class.  I have used several of the technologies that have been taught in my class.  The students really like Prezi, QR codes and completing the DBLs using iMovie.  I also like the 3D Game Lab, I would like to spend more time working with this to see if  it can be used in my class.  Next semester I will try using Popplet with my students. I will also be incorporating more YouTube videos and TED Talks. http://prezi.com/sdxj7itht14w/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Stem Class

I am so glad I took the time to take this class.  I discovered some great things to use in my classroom!  I never realize how easy it was to make QR codes and my students thought they were so much fun to add to their vocabulary word walls.  Another thing I will take and use again it the Popplets, I like that is is interactive with everyone.   Overall I enjoyed the class and I like that it was online so as teacher when we have a "free minute" I was able to do my class.

I must say that some of the most positive things I learned in this class along with collaboration would have to be the use of the new technology related to Anna moto, picto card, Prezi, and the like. These are excellent items to use as far as presentations, as well as graphic organization. I feel these will be great tools and will definitely enhance the lessons and the work done by students over the long haul.

I really enjoyed working with 3D Game Lab and look forward to using it in my courses next semester (or next year more extensively).









The idea of using student leaders to help develop pertinent materials is something I hope to continue as well.  It changes their and my perspective on lessons and could really make it more collaborative.

A Learning Jam (no peanut butter to go with it though in case of allergies).

My Mood:

I feel like I grew a lot in this course in terms of my confidence in technology use.  My students enjoyed getting to do the projects and the increased use of what to them is probably routine (using their devices).  PBLs are not as intimidating now, and that is such a good thing because I really believe that students will retain more through that style of education.

I also enjoy using QR codes, Popplet, and Prezi, but I am really glad that we were exposed to so many different types of ICT.  I noticed in several other posts, that other participants liked some of the other applications - so it appears that the variety is certainly a good thing.

Thank you to the team who put this together! This was a worthwhile learning opportunity and you all made it possible!

I am going to echo a few of the other posts in my suggestion: I was really enthusiastic about designing my own 3D Gamelab, but we didn't have a lesson on how to do it. It would be great to have that added for future classes.

Thank you again and have a wonderful winter break soon, everyone!

I'm Lovin It

I am loving all the technology I have been learning about through my enrollment in this course.  My goals for future lesson plans include technology as often as possible.  I have really enjoyed watching all the videos and TED talks.  I now subscribe to the YouTube channel and geek out over the videos while I am on the treadmill at the gym.  The Google+ community, prezi, popplet, and QR codes have been the most helpful to me.  My students had their science fair projects due today and I was very pleasantly surprised to see two of my students who posted QR codes on their science fair boards!  They linked the QR codes to helpful websites they referenced to help them with their science fair projects.  Warmed my heart.  I love hearing about my students using the StudyBlue.com flash cards, Chirp, and sending me messages in Google+.  They are excited about using hashtags (#) in their posts and now the joke of the day in class is to listen for me to "hashtag" some part of my content delivery.  This course has really helped me to extend my reach to my students on a more technical level.  Working with the community member in DBL#3, he was very excited to see my students collaborating on a Google+ community and having to look up information using the online social network.  Thank you for the opportunity and I have really enjoyed participating in the course.  Learned invaluable information which makes my hectic teaching days much, much easier!

Some of my students presenting their popplet's...

I really appreciate how user-friendly Diane made the course.  Especially since everything was done online.  Diane, you did a fantastic job breaking the assignments down and making sure we knew step by step what we had to do to accomplish our assignment.  June, and Diane McKee were fantastic about responding to any questions or concerns or technical issues I had.  Thank you for easing my anxiety about technology mal-functions!

I would love to learn more about how to make the YouTube videos like Mr. Anderson on his videos.  How do I interface my computer to create the short videos to help me flip my classroom?  What is the best way to help me use technology to flip my classroom? - These are all questions I now am working through as I begin to use technology and flip my world upside down.  :)

I also really appreciated the instructors, (Diane) being so flexible with our teaching schedules.  With life, teaching, and using Student Leaders, Peer Collaborators, and Community Leaders, and a fall break to Italy, the scheduling became hectic!  Thank you to Diane for your flexibility to help me succeed in this class!

Sincerely,

Chantel Dooley

One More Assignment to get it!

Thanks so much for this opportunity.  I will be taking these tools and using them in my class for sure.  I love the popplet tool A LOT!!  I think the students will love it too.  There are so many tools that I would have never found on my own.  But I got to honest.  When I saw this grant shown at ISTE 2013 I though there was going to be like the 3D GameLab.  I really was looking forward to posting challenging up on there and having the students earn tokens. That was the biggest let down.  The ISTE conference got my hopes up.  I was looking at my units and figuring out how to make it work with the 3D lab.  I would love to do something like that with my class.  Why?  I feel like the students are so dependent on me and they need to work together and without me.  I think the 3D Lab would do this.  Other than that, I loved the online class.  Thanks for the tools.  My toolbox is now loaded up and I am sharing them with my colleagues. 

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting from this course at the beginning other than trying to learn a little more about STEM. I think a got a lot more than that. The biggest thing for me was to see all of the different tools that can be used in the classroom. I try to keep up on much of that type of stuff but there were still things that we worked on that I would not have otherwise known about or even spent the time to try. While I may not use all of them, at least I am aware that they are out there now. It also helped me to do the DBLL activities. I usually try to add some of these into my classrooms and this forced me to add additional activities that I think helped my classes this semester. Finally, the course did require a lot more time than I had planned. I was eventually able to get it done but it came with much effort.

This course changed how i plan

This course really changed the way I plan my lessons. I have come across some frustration with my district because several things were blocked such as Popplet and all blogging sites. But I still see the value in them. It will give me something to work on. I really liked animoto for my students because it forced them to condense material into a 30 second video. It had made videos so much easier for the classroom. I can assign them and have them presented in one block period. I haven't done the voki yet but I want to try it. I saw in an earlier post someone did it for writing which I think is brilliant. All in all I learned a lot. I would really have liked to have created a 3D Gamelab. I really enjoyed that at the beginning and for some reason it kept me on task. I guess I am a big kid at heart. If I was to make any suggestions for improvement it would be to expand the 3D Gamelab and have the next set create one for their students.

I want to thank ST4Stem for allowing me to participate in this project; I am walking away knowlegde of ICT tools and a brighter outlook on where my teaching is headed. It was a great amount of fun making Vokis with my students; as teams they wrote paragraphs about an ecosystem and then typed it into their Voki. This ICT tool made my kids excited to write. I also enjoyed brainstorming using Popplet; I was able to follow the DBLL format and add different academic areas that surround a specific skill that I had to teach. Using Popplet with my students.......priceless. Finally, they were out of the books and reading expository text via kid friendly websites; making graphic organizers that included the topic and details (with some help from me) and writing about it.

While it was a bit exasperating; I am so much more confident in my abilities as a teacher and this course has definately reignited that spark that pushes me to be the best teacher that I can be.

Whew, did it!

I made a Prezi moodboard ST4STEM Mood Board.

Key things I picked up in this course:

• A greater comfort level exploring different technologies that I hadn't used (or used much) before.
• I really appreciated the structure of the DBLL's; I think that will be a very valuable tool moving forward.
• I am intrigued by the "game" aspect, and I hope to be able to pursue that further.
• The whole infographic thing is intriguing.  I had a little fun with my Geometry students practicing scaling a bit, giving them a little bit of data from a variety of sources, and having them make correctly-scaled infographics to represent the data (tied in to our unit on similarity and scaling).
• The experience of reaching out into the wider community was uncomfortable for me, but I think it worked out pretty well (I had "experts" for both DBLL's).

Some things I tried outside this course, but probably because I was doing stuff for this course:

• In thinking about avatars and RPG's, I came up with a research project on symmetry for my Geometry students.  I was able to get some advice from colleagues.
• As part of DBLL#3, I had students use the journal feature built into Blackboard, then I used their journal entries as part of the assessment.
• I used DBL to re-envision a project my Calculus 2/3 students just completed.

Things I learned that I may not use again (but I'll probably share these with colleagues):

• The time-line tool.
• Popplet (I thought Padlet was much better!)
• QR code stuff.  My students said that was so last year.  I might still try it again, though.

What I was hoping for that I didn't get:  more ideas (and ways to implement them) about using games in teaching.  I had seen many of the pieces in the game-oriented lessons before.

A Well-Rounded Course

I felt that this course did a solid job of introducing a variety of ICT tools and teaching methods for teachers to experiment with in the class.  It was well suited to people with limited experience in these areas.  The faculty was responsive.  I enjoyed the TED talks in particular.

I found the course enlightening and definitely worth the time. As an older teacher, I was not plugged in to the many web tools that are available that engage students and facilitate learning. I am already successfully incorporating them into my class. My view of project-based learning has been significantly changed for the better. I used to think that I did PBL, but in reality all I was doing was a project that reinforced concepts that I had already taught (much like a cookbook lab). True PBL is a real paradigm shift for me that sets some parameters and empowers students to own their own learning and master content while solving a real world problem. I realized that do not need to research and know everything in advance. Industry experts can and will help and student leaders rise to the occasion. In DBLL#3, I learned as much from my students and our expert as they did. It was fun for me too. However, in transforming my classroom to incorporating more PBL experiences, it will a significant amount of thoughtful planning and redesign of curriculum.
I wish that we did more with the gaming software. For example, I would have liked to learn how to design our own learning game using it. Some of the activities and websites were very useful, and some not (like the calendar planning tool one), but I think different teachers will like different ones, so the exposure was overall good.