My 21st Century Classroom

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SEDU 183 Final Exam: My 21^st Century Classroom

 

Summary: For this project you will create your 21^st Century classroom from the demographics, to the physical outlay, to the technology integrations to support the six areas of a networked class. All resources used and sourced are to be documented in the Annotated Bibliography, and all content posted on a separate page within your blog.

 

Rationale: Since day one, I asked you to be risk takers, seek out answers to your own problems, and think beyond the current norms and mores of today’s classroom. This project requires you to demonstrate all of these tenets.

 

Equivocation: Since we are talking about transforming schools rather than just reforming them, you have every opportunity here to create your ideal classroom. However, what must stay in the realm of possibilities. Remember a dreamer needs a realist as much as a realist needs a dreamer.

 

Procedure:

1.    Create a separate page for your project on your blog titled “My 21^st Century Classroom.”

a.    All material related to this project must be accessible from this page alone.

b.    All links and embedded content must be live and working at the time of evaluation

2.    Create SIX sections on this page:

a.    Welcome - Introduce yourself and your “This I Believe” video. Tell us about your future plans as a learner and teacher.

 

b.    My Classroom:

                      i.    Introductions: Introduce your school and students; provide a demographic account of your class; and a general learning composition of the class including your special needs students. This must be

                    ii.    Setting: create graphic representation of your classroom, explain, and justify why your classroom is organized this way and how it supports the needs of your students and parents.

                   iii.    Integrations – choose and justify 5 technologies that you will integrate into your classroom.  Your integrations must address each of the following. Be sure to justify and explain how the integration will support these areas:

1.    Connecting students and teachers inside the classroom

2.    Publishing student and teacher work locally and globally

3.    Connect students and teachers outside the classroom

4.    Connect with experts around the world

5.    Collaborate with others to create and share knowledge

 

3.    Assistive Technology: explain your particular student’s need, provide a graphic representation of the student, and explain which technologies you will use to level the learning field for them.

 

4.    Feedback – create and embed a form for your blogosphere audience to get feedback from at least 5 people and myself.

 

 

 

 

5.    Annotated Bibliography – Source all borrowed information and web references used in the creation of this project.  This section needs to be in MLA format for an Annotated Bibliography

 

6.    Self-Reflection:  In this section, reflect on your development as a learner and as a future teacher. What risks have you taken, and at what cost? What did you gain? How have you grown?

 

Expectations:

Your project page must contain all of the following elements:

1.    All sections and required content

2.    One video

3.    At least 5 images

4.    One embedded graphical representation of your classroom

5.    1 free hand drawing of your student

6.    Bountiful links to outside resources and tools that support and justify your reasoning for your choices

7.    Your feedback form

 

Assessment:

This project is worth 300 points grade book. Your project will be evaluated in two domains: Content and Usability. On the day of the exam I will complete the form and email you the results.

 

Domain: Content (200 points)

This domain seeks to find answers to the following questions:

·         Is all the content presented and accounted for?  60

·         Is all the content explained, supported and rationalized?  60

·         Is the reflection honest and specifically addresses all of the prompts?  30

·         Is all the content believable?  20

·         Is all the content grammatically correct and no misspellings?  20

·         Is all content borrowed sourced?  10

 

Domain: Usability (100 points)

This domain seeks to find the answers to the following questions:

·         Is the page neatly organized and visually pleasing? 40

·         Is all the digital media and rich text relevant, effective, and working? 30

·         Is this page a valid resource for others to use and model? 30

 

Welcome

Hi, I am Leah Stearns. For my final project in Sedu 183 I created my ideal 21st Century Classroom. The first part of my project is a video I created titled: This I Believe, please take a moment to watch it. This video tells a little about my educational background and my beliefs about education, my students, and teaching. In the future, I plan to teach first or second grade in an urban or suburban area.

My Classroom

Introductions

I teach at first grade at The Learning Elementary School in Boston, MA. There are 17 students in my classroom, 7 girls and 10 boys. My class is made up of students from many ethnicities and socieconomic statuses. I have one child, Christian, who is diagnosed with asbergers syndrome and one child, Astrid,who is diagnosed with a mild learning disibility in math. Astrid is at the kindergarten math level. She has difficulty with number recognition and matching the number word to the correct number and number value. Christian is extremely high functioning and is on grade level in every subject but has difficulty adapting to changes in the daily schedule and taking turns when talking and sharing ideas. Christian also is interested in gardening and is very knowledgable about the subject. He will talk for hours about gardening. So far all of my other students are on grade level and making adequate progress in every subject.

Setting

My classroom is made up of different areas or centers, the play center, art center, literacy and quiet area, entrance area, and three technology centers. The technology centers are made up of four classroom computers, a cart with 25 ipads, a smart board area with surround sound and a gaming system area (Wii gaming system). The play area is made up of dress up, a kitchen, musical instruments, and blocks, etc. The art center includes multiple easels a drawing table, many different types of art supplies and two sinks for clean-up. We also have a class aquarium.  The different centers encourage my students to explore the classroom at their own pace. Notice that there are no desks in my classroom but instead I have group tables. This will help the students to learn to work together and collaborate. I will also encourage my students to make use of the provided couch, pillows, area carpets and invidual carpets when working if this helps them to learn better. At the entrance of the classroom, there are cubbies for the student to store their belongings in and there are also mailboxes for class work and such. Student works (arts and academics) are displayed on wall throughout the classroom so that parents and visitors can see our accomplishments.

Integrations
1. I will use the speaker/audio system to connect to all of my students and to better keep their attention, which is in the SMART board technology center. This audio system will be extremely beneficial to those students who are frequently distracted.

2. I will use Issu to publish my student's works. You must have a username and password but this website turns basically any kind of document into a flip book. This will be great as an online portfolio, which parents can view at home also!
3. I will use Facebook teacher fanpage to connect with parents and students outside the classroom. I will post a daily schedule and newsletter and all homework assignments on my Facebook page.
4. My classroom will use skype to connect with other experts and students around the world, and if possible we may get the chance to talk to some professionals in certain fields of my student's interests or that connect with a current classroom lesson.

5. I will create a blog about my classroom/teaching experience and follow other like-minded teachers. This will be a source of collaboration and means of sharing knowledge and great ideas.

Assistive Technology

Astrid is at the kindergarten math level. She has difficulty with number recognition and matching the number word to the correct number and number value. She requires some type of assitive technology in order to help her better succeed in math. I will use DotMath to assist in teaching math to Astrid. In terms of technology I will use intellimathics to reinforce the math concepts I teach. Intellimathics is a computer program. Here is a picture of Astrid.



Annotated Bibliography

"Asberger's Syndrome-Symptoms." WebMD. WebMD, LLC, n.d. Web. 3 Dec 2012.             <http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/tc/aspergers-syndrome-symptoms>.

 

This website explained the symptoms of asbergers syndrome, I used it when describing my student with asbergers.

 

 

The Learning Project Elementary School. The Learning Project, n.d. Web. 3 Dec 2012.             <http://learningproject.org/>.

 

I used this website to create the demographics for my 21st century classroom.

 

 

Shaw, Jaclynn. "The Building Blocks of Designing Early Childhood Educational Environments." URC. URC. Web. 10 Dec 2012. <http://www.kon.org/urc/v9/shaw.html>.

 

I used this website to research classroom design and what is effective and not effective when setting up an elementary school classroom.

 

W, Glenn. "Tip of the Week – Six Great Ways to Publish Student Work." history tech History, technology, and probably some other stuff. WordPress, 9 2011. Web. 10 Dec 2012. <http://historytech.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/tip-of-the-week-six-great-ways-to-publish-student-work/>.

 

This web source included a list of online student works publishing sites. I used it to find a website that would be age appropriate and fit the needs of my students when publishing works online.

Self-Reflection

I have gained a lot from this class. To begin with I have become a lot more comfortable with different kinds of technology that I had previously had little or no experience using, particularally Blogger  Google Drive and the Mac Books. I now feel that I can use some of these sources of technology on my own and I will contine to use these resources in future class projects. There are many online teacher resources that we learned about in class and these will come in handy in future classes too. When completely this project I took the risk of talking about myself in my "This I Believe Video". I really do not like talking about myself to others, so for me this was a risk.

Feedback