Category: Week of September 16th

Teachnology Philosophy Reflection 5

Molly Sand on

After reading “A Community of Voices: Educational Blog Management Strategies and Tools,” I started thinking about the relevancy and need of using Edpuzzle in a co-taught language arts classroom with ESL and mainstream students.

I believe Edpuzzle will be an asset to my classroom because of the features it offers and content available. The only set back I have currently is the amount of free storage. I have almost met the limit for free storage and as a teacher, I do not have the funds to create content outside of this current project. I was able to develop chapters 1 through 4 of the audio reading for Number the Stars. If I want to continue to use this tool, I will need to purchase more storage or figure out a way to save the video quizzes I have created and move on to more content.

The need for a technology that is easily accessible and is user friendly is important in an integrated classroom. The various learning styles and levels complicate many lessons. We do a lot of starting over from scratch with our co-taughts and this can cause frustration for mainstream students in a co-taught. With Edpuzzle, I am hoping to relieve some of those frustrations because the videos will be posted to their Schoology class page and they will be able to work at their own pace.

The Edpuzzle videos will allow students to reread (re-listen) on their own time and answer stop/check questions to gauge understanding of the story. I think using this form of technology is relevant for mainstream and ESL students to aid in individualized education.

Teachnology Philosophy Reflection 4

Molly Sand on

There is mainstream teaching and then there is co-teaching. Yes, they both have teaching in the name, but they are different approaches being used in many schools. I am a teacher, but I co-teach four out of the five classes i teach. According to the U of M, “Co-teaching is defined as two teachers working together with groups of students; sharing the planning, organization, delivery, and assessment instruction, as well as the physical space.”

Co-teaching can be difficult at times and other times i am grateful to have another adult in the room to back me up. One thing I have learned about my co-teachers is that I am the most tech savvy out of the two co-teaching pairs I am a part of. My co-teachers are older than me and have not used certain programs or software, such as Edpuzzle.

Since I share my language arts classes with a co-teacher, i will need to teach not only my students how to use Edpuzzle, but also my co-teacher. She gets lost when using technology and I have had to remake many lessons because formatting or software was not compatible or pleasing to the eye. I am glad I started working on my videos for Number the Stars ahead of time because I should have them all finished with enough time to teach my co-teacher the new content.