I've been teaching since I had an actual chalkboard and no computer in my classroom. For most of my teaching career, though, I've had a single computer, and I have always integrated technology into my teaching as much as possible. I am one of the founding members of Teachers Pay Teachers, and I found out recently that one of my digital products was the first-ever sale on the site. I'm fairly comfortable with technology, and I feel like it's my responsibility to integrate technology into my teaching in a way that benefits my students and gives them the skills they need to succeed. My district will be 1:1 with Chromebooks as of 2018-2019, so I want to be ready for that transition.
Actually, until this last school year, I'd never had a SmartBoard, just a projector that overheated multiple times a day. I was lucky enough this year to get the latest small classroom SmartBoard that has a screen more like a TV instead of using a projector. I started the instructional technology cohort back in the fall, and I have been integrating more and more of what I learn into my teaching. In addition, my second job is as an adjunct instructor for Benedictine University's graduate ESL endorsement courses, which are blended. This has required me to learn a great deal about online programs like Blackboard, Canvas, and D2L.
On a personal level, I live in Plainfield with my husband and my two sons, and I'm expecting a baby girl this fall. I've been maintaining a blog about my family since 2009. Using the blog as a kind of journal, my blogging varies in regularity, though I've never missed a month. I love the format of a blog because I've had this blog since my son Nick was about six months old. He's now eight and a half, and my younger son Henry is six. Using a blog, I can look back and remember not only the milestones from my children's lives but what I was thinking and feeling at the time. I also did pregnancy updates when I was expecting Henry. That has been very helpful to me because I can go back and remember what I looked (and felt) like at different stages.
While I'm certainly not prolific, I have published over 1,000 posts in the 8 years I've been blogging. The blog I'm using now is one I started back when I was taking graduate school courses for my master's degree, back in 2008. While I'm comfortable with blogger and with many online programs, I have to say I still don't do twitter. It is probably something I'll explore more while on maternity leave. Right now, my favorite tech tools are Google Classroom, padlet, QR Codes, and Google Earth. One of the lessons I am most proud of this year is a padlet I did with my 1st graders. I actually did several--this is just one of the most recent ones.
I assign daily writing homework for my students, and my 1st grade ELLs were learning about animal adaptations. I gave them a QR code and let them write their responses on the padlet. They loved it and several kids kept adding responses day after day. During class, they'd start out at one of the dkfindout pages, like this one, and then post what they'd learned. With some padlets, I let the students comment on one another's work, and this added an interactive dimension that they loved. They'd even take home the QR code and add more comments. The parents loved seeing what the kids were working on in class.
My funniest EdTech moment? I have to say it was a simple Discovery Education lesson, where I was showing one of the Planet Earth videos to a class of 3rd graders in a class I was co-teaching. I had seen the video before and somehow never noticed the polar bear mating scene in the middle of the video. So yes, I accidentally showed 30 nine-year-olds about three seconds of polar bear sex. Luckily, polar bears apparently don't last very long, and the scene was immediately followed by footage of the most adorable baby polar bears ever. I distracted the kids by pointing out the cuteness of the babies, while the student teacher I was co-teaching with quietly panicked in the corner. I guess my distraction worked, or else the kids were just clueless, because no one said anything.
I've had plenty of failures with EdTech, mostly with my ELMO document camera refusing to boot up, or my SmartBoard software freezing repeatedly when I've prepared a lovely lesson for my observation. We're getting new computers this year (laptops with docking stations), and I'm hoping to have fewer fails this year.
