Student Teaching Practicum

Link to the Google Doc: Student Teaching Practicum

Tweets about "#stprac"

From the Teaching Channel: Classroom Management

This is Lori Sinclair from Woodlawn Elementary School in Lawrence, Kansas. Here she demonstrates the ritual and routines of her 3rd grade class. Moreover, she sits down with an instructional specialist to explicate the reasoning. Even though it is 3rd grade, I firmly believe many of these rituals and routines can translate to any level. Enjoy and leave comments.

Creating Community during Student Teaching

When I survived my student teaching experience in 1998, I remember it was a very lonely experience with little support from my supervisor or my cooperating teacher, who on the day I entered her class handed me the text and the ancillary materials and said, "The poetry unit starts tomorrow. If you need me I will be in the teacher's workroom."

Fast forward 15 years, and now as a University Supervisor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, I have the privilege to work with student teachers and shape their teaching beliefs, practices, and experiences. The first priority was not to make their experience in anyway like mine. My goal with every student teacher is to make them feel as they are still connected to the University, but more importantly to expand their experience into a community at practice.

Community of Practice

Now in my 4th semester, I feel I am getting closer and closer to this community at practice. I have done this by using one of the first online file sharing programs - BOX.com. A new account affords 5GB of free online storage. But as an early integrator, they afforded me 50GB of online storage of files.  This community consists of teachers, professors, student teachers, and former student teachers new in the job market. I created the file structure and opened it to anyone interested in sharing resources. Of course I uploaded much of the content, but as time progresses, more and more are uploading their own resources. Within the file we can hold discussions on topics or files or pose questions to the group as a whole. Currently  over 43 collaborators have access to the resources. While most are in Pennsylvania, the news has reached New Mexico, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Below is the embedded file. I encourage you to join or simply visit. Feel free to upload your own resources or comment on the resources listed. Enjoy.

The Connected Educator: Chapter 1 Self Assessment

In the opening chapter of The Connected Educator the authors, Beach and Hall created a comprehensive survey on the new literacies of the 21st century. I adopted and adapted the survey to use a pre-assessment for my student in my Teaching and Learning with Technology course. I will follow the post up with the current data from the 3 sections of my students and how I intend to use the data to drive my instruction and use the same survey at the end of the semester. I am excited. I created the form in Google Drive. 

The Connected Educator and VoiceThread

As mentioned in previous post, I am using The Connected Educator in next semester's cohort of students in our Teaching and Learning with Technology. As I am planning the curriculum, the authors Sheryl Beach and Lani Hall have included a "Get Connected" section at the end of every chapter. At the end of chapter 2, they suggest readers to join their VoiceThread to discuss either by text or by audio about change in our schools. As you can see below, the numbers of participants are growing. Feel free to join in even if you don't have the book right now, but I highly suggest you do. 





VoiceThread is a sight worthy of discussion. It is real easy to sign up and use to create open and private discussions. Respondents can comment via text or audio very easily. To listen or read previous comments, you only have to hover over the profile pics around the discussion board. Try it out. Simply click on one of the respondents to the right and read or listen to the contribution to the discussion. 

Beyond simple voice and text discussions, VoiceThread has created a platform for discussing video and respondents and actually watch a video, pause it, and mark the actual video with comments and annotations all the while talking through their comments and explaining either visually or audibly. Check out this example.

I really like the sharing features. With invites, embedding, and social media integrations, it is really easy to garner more voices to the discussion. I plan to use this with my students to discuss a modified prompt about the chapter. Look for a post in the following weeks after my students have participated in their discussion, I will invite and share to hear what your voices think. Later in the semester I will use the video feature with my student teachers.