Reflections of a Hopeful Teacher

  Image courtesy of Shutterstock Artificial Intelligence My high school sophomore English teacher once said, "Once you know the rules, you can break them." At that time, I was annoyed. Who writes "perfectly?" Who should even try? I'll have to admit this wasn't my favorite teacher (and years later, I still have some disdain for her), but with thirty-four years having passed and my writing having developed much MUCH more, I give credence to her words of wisdom. I can't imagine my vocabulary or expression ever having evolved if I had access to shortcuts; thankfully, my high school senior English teacher helped shape me into a concise, sophisticated writer and I've only expanded upon this role as I've matured.  As I pored through the lesson titled  Artificial Intelligence: Is It Plagiarism? featured on  common sense education , I am tempted to say that Ada (presumed to be a fictitious student) did plagiarize by using AI and not citing the sources. T...

                          Zumpano, Nicole. "Who's Who in the American Revolution." Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet, 26 May 2015, https://zumpanotechlab.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-american-revolutionits-like-we-were.html. Accessed 25 May 2024.  For my Padlet,  I chose to write about Ms. Malhiot's  primary class's project on   The American Revolution.   This assignment qualifies as active learning as the students used  PicCollage and  Audioboom to demonstrate their knowledge of key elements of the war, employing knowledge of key facts and creating original projects that could be displayed and presented. One can see from the visual features that inquiry and creativity were involved throughout the whole lesson. Nicole Zumpano's blog post,  The American Revolution...It's Like We Were There!  features visual highlights from the students' projects, wh...

  Image courtesy of Shutterstock My History with Technology My relationship with technology is one that goes back to using landline telephones , toy walkie talkies , and calculators as a child. In fact for my 10th birthday, my aunt gave me my first calculator upon hearing from my cousin that I had wanted one; I was fascinated by a gadget that could compute ANY math problem using addition , subtraction , multiplication and division . By 8th grade, I was forming secret messages by sequencing numbers upside down and by freshman year of college, I was calculating square roots, sins, cosines, etc. How could one small device do so much! I was prepared to be blown away by the Dos version of Word, later by Windows, and eventually by the Internet. Technology was fun, easy to use, and very efficient. I couldn't imagine a future that didn't include more sophisticated forms of technology; furthermore, I couldn't imagine anything but benefit coming from this. Fast forward thirty year...

“Pear Deck Assessment, Multimedia,” Arlington Independent School District,  https://www.aisd.net/district/departments/academic-services/teaching-and-learning/technology-integr ation-teaching-and-learning/technology-integration . Accessed 17 May 2024. Today, I will be talking about a platform that enhanced my lessons as a remote learning teacher and continues to benefit classrooms nationwide; this interface is known as Pear Deck . Pear Deck contains a variety of learning tools such as the traditional slideshow presenter, assessment resources , practice games , and tutoring services . However, I will specifically be focusing on the traditional Pear Deck slideshow tool and its many useful features.  Pear Deck is a service that is available through a personal or school district subscription; it is used in conjunction with a Google or Microsoft 365 account. In this post, I will focus on linking or creating a live slideshow presentation using Google Slides.  Linking a presentat...

  Image courtesy of Pixabay After reading McGraw Hill Canada's "What is TPACK Theory and How Can It Be Used in the Classroom?" I was still a little unclear as to how little of this theory I currently use. After all, I am a 21st century post-pandemic teacher who is familiar with using platforms such as Google Classroom  and Pear Deck ; furthermore, I have instructed my students about how to use effective keywords in their Google searches and identify reliable sources of information using some of the concepts discussed in the article, "How to Identify Reliable Information" published by Stevenson University Online . After reflecting on the statements I just made and reading "'Grounded' Technology Integration: Instructional Planning Using Curriculum-Based Activity Type Taxonomies," , I realized that I have a lot to yet learn and integrate as a high school social studies teacher.  Image courtesy of Giphy       When discussing the TPACK model, McGr...