1.  Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

    Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.

Teachers:

    a.promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.

Through my studies in this program, I have modeled for my students the need to be a life long learner. They have learned that I continue to learn and grow, and I share the new knowledge with them. Through this, my students have learned everyone has something to learn all of the time.

During this degree program, I have created several projects for courses. I have involved my students in the creation and testing of many of these projects. Some of the projects I have created and tested with my students are:

• Visiting the Regions of the United States ~ Virtually
• Mexico Web Quest

In addition, in order to learn and grow as a teacher of technology, I conducted an interview with a technology teacher in my system, and then compared my results to those from an eMints teacher from Missouri. Through this interview, I learned so much about the differences in technology throughout the country.

    b. engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources.

During the course of my study, I have encouraged my students to engage in real world problems using digital tools. One example of this is a WebQuest that I created to facilitate my students' study of Mexico. Students were given a real world task and an authentic reason to find information about Mexico.

In addition, my students participated in two other WebQuests, which were created by a colleague. Both of these WebQuests had a real world task that students needed to complete, making the students' study of Immigration and Washington, D.C. more authentic.

Students in my class also had the opportunity to explore our cultural differences. Together with students from other parts of the U.S., we created a cultural wiki. This wiki, Cooking Around the World, was a way for each student to share a bit of his/her culture. Students were able to learn about other cultures as well.

    c. promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.

While learning about the different ways to collaborate online this year, I began a classroom blog. I shared this with the students and discussed ways to share information safely online, to collaborate with different students. We got as far as creating the first few entries. The students were excited about this project. Unfortunately, due to a lot of red tape, and time schedules, we did not complete this project. I fully intend to begin next year with a classroom blog.

This year, I learned about and used a variety of WebQuests. All of the WebQuests that were used were designed to be cooperative learning activities. Students needed to follow steps and work together in order to be successful with these projects. One WebQuest that I created and used with my class was created as a culminating activity for our study of Mexico.

    d. model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.

During the past year, I have really enjoyed promoting and modeling online collaboration. My students and I participated in an online collaboration about cultural differences. We created a wikispace called Cooking Around the World. Each classroom added recipes from the various cultures of students. All students were able to view this wiki to share their culture while learning about others. We collaborated with students from different parts of the country using this wikispace. In addition, I recently set up a wikispace, Bookshare Franklin, which is intended to be used to share information about books. I created this wiki so that my colleagues, the teachers in third to fifth grade in Franklin, MA, can share feelings, summaries and thoughts about different children's books. My hope is that this will take off, and become a resource for our staff.