Professional Development Plan

Looking back at the past two semesters I am amazed with how much I have learned in such a short period of time.  As I was looking through my work from my classes I really can see how far I have come when in regards to technology.  For example, as I was looking through my Personal Learning Network (PLN) from CEP 810 it was crazy to see how limited it was to begin with! So in order to showcase my growth over the past few months I decided to create a new PLN using Prezi.  You can see the before and after below:





As you can see in the above Prezis, my personal learning network has gown exponentially with all of the new tools and sites I have learned about along the way. This, however, is only the beginning of my PLN and I look forward to it growing more and more as I continue on with the Masters program.

Looking back on my goals from CEP 810 I noticed that I was extremely vague when it came to what exactly I wanted to accomplish during this program.  I simply desired to learn more about technology and how to integrate it into my French classroom to help my students learn and I would definitely say I have started on the path to accomplishing this goal.  I have learned about many different types of online resources I can use in my classroom ranging from Prezi to Jing to Blogger but there is still so much more to learn. 

To start, I plan on completing the MAET Masters Program within the next few years to learn even more about educational technology within the classroom.  Based on my experiences so far in the program I’m sure there is much more to learn in the upcoming courses.  One thing I really connected with during the past few classes was the idea of the Flipped Classroom and I plan on implementing this once I have to my own classroom to see if it would be beneficial for my students.  Even though I already created one lesson on the past tense in French, that I will probably alter a bit but I would definitely consider using it in future, I want to make more!    I really believe this will help not only with student retention but it will also give us so much more time in class to help the students actually use the language.  Ultimately my main goal will be to end up with 2-3 lessons each month that follow the Flipped Classroom model.  I’ll start out slow introducing them to my students then slowly add more and more until they are accustomed to this new style of learning. 

I really look forward to all of the learning that is going to come in the future.  As educators we are lifetime students and I hope that by keeping my mind open and trying out new technologies I'll be able to help my students learn not only French but also about the world of technology and what they can do with it.

WPP Findings and Implications

After working on my Wicked Problem, the issue of teaching grammar in the foreign language classroom, I feel that I've learned a lot about how to address similar problems in the future in a systemic and functional manner.  Below are the answers to the final questions about my Wicked Problem as well as my final conclusion about how the project went.

• Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

Unfortunately because of the fact that I am not currently teaching I didn't have an active French class to implement my solution with so I was forced to use my parents because they were the closest available candidates.  Because of this set back I didn't get the results I was hoping for.  With this presentation in particular my audience would need to have previously taken a French course in order to be successful and although I gave my parents a small lesson on French they have never studied it so the information didn't stick very well.

• Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice

Again, because of my lack of students I really didn't see much success with my WPP implementation but hopeful that in future when I do have a class that I will see some success.

• How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?

I would definitely follow the same setup we used here in class starting with detailing your wicked problem then brainstorming solutions then trying those solutions then reflecting.  Its a great thought process to go through and gives you ample chances to adjust your solution as you see fit.  However, in the future when I do another project like this I would definitely add more layers to it, meaning not just create a presentation with Jing like I did here but create more assignments that will give the students more practice with the topic and of course, incorporate more technology both inside and outside the classroom.

• What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?

The main thing I learned is that although incorporating technology can be scary sometimes and things may go wrong, in the end its worth the risk to try something new in your classroom and give your students alternative ways to learn.  I think the order in which we did this project was very beneficial especially because we received feedback each step of the way to help us improve our solutions.  I would suggest that anyone wanting to do a project like this use their fellow teachers and ask them for their opinion because you'll end up getting great feedback that can make your project even better.

• In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do

Well, first off I would probably add more layers to my solution.  For the purpose of this class i just made a presentation using Jing and PowerPoint to inductively teach the past tense in French.  However, if I were using this in class I would add more activities incorporating technology in order to really build on what the students learned in the presentation.  Another big problem with my project was my lack of students so I wasn't able to get accurate results on my solution but going forward I would probably like to implement this type of learning in one or two classes and teach the others in class in order to compare student learning from one class to the next to give me an idea of what is most successful. 

• What are some conclusions and recommendations you can make to others after going through the process of addressing a "wicked problem"?

Unfortunately I didn't come to any really firm conclusions about the effectiveness of my wicked problem solution due to my lack of students however I really enjoyed the general idea behind this project.  There are always those big problems you face in the classroom whether it deals with your content, classroom management or even general classroom activities and this project gave us a great set of tools to create a solution for our individual problems.  I would definitely recommend other teachers to try out a project like this and collaborate with other teachers to solve these wicked problems we come across in the classroom because chances are, if you are having a problem someone else is too.

Mobile Learning Blog Post

I really enjoyed navigating through all of the mobile learning tools provided during this lesson.  I think that incorporating all this technology our students are currently using into our classroom and turn it from our enemy to our friend.  No matter how many rules we put into place about phone use in the classroom our students will try and use it.  So why fight a battle we ultimately won't win?

I checked out a few different tools from the lab that I really enjoyed.  So many of our students have iPods/iPads/iPhones etc and there are so many great apps they can download to assist with their learning.  This website was great for navigating through the different apps that are available and they're even organized by subject matter to make finding the perfect tool for you easy.  In the foreign language section there were different translators that your students can download and use as well as a Spanish tutor that can help your students learn those harder concepts (sadly, there's no French... yet).

Another site that I really enjoyed was Poll Everywhere.  This is great for in class work (especially movies!) to see if your students are understanding whatever it is they're working on.  All you have to do is create an account, post a question and your students will send a text with their answer to a specified number and you get a visual of what everyone's responses were.  This, I believe, would be really great with movies to make sure you're students are actually following along.  Another great benefit to this is that it is completely free and there is no need for Internet connection!  Even if your students don't have a cell phone you can still have them write out their responses onto a sheet of paper to turn in at the end so you know they were working as well.

Overall, I thought this was an extremely beneficial because nearly every single one of our students has a cell phone that is constantly attached to their hip.  If we can find ways to incorporate that technology rather than forbid it I think we can really make some positive steps in student learning.  

WPP Implementation

 Wicked Problem Part C required me to implement my solution, unfortunately I am not currently teaching in the classroom so I had to try out my solution on the people I could find.. My parents.  Although they may not be the best candidates to test this solution out on since they have never taken a foreign language class, they were the only option I had so I just went with it. 

As a reminder, my wicked problem is about teaching grammar in my French classroom and how to make it more interactive and student based rather than teacher based.  So for my solution I decided to try out the Flipped Classroom model to see if having my students learn the grammar rules on their own at home then practicing in class would help them remember the rules more readily.  In order to test out my theory I created a Jing presentation dealing with the passé composé (or the past tense) where I read a story out loud featuring the passé composé in French.  As the students go along they only had to pay attention to the story and the highlighted parts to try and figure out the rules.  At the end of the presentation I guide students towards figuring out what the grammar rules are so that we can discuss them in class.  Below is a link to my Jing presentation.

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So I showed this video to my parents and kind of gave them a quick French lesson (because they don't know anything about it whatsoever).  Basically, it was a big disappointment.   I think the main reason for them not understanding anything was because they have never taken a French class and the concept I was teaching was something you would learn in your second year so its a little more complex.  Another big disappoint dealt with Jing, because you can only do a five minute clip it was really limiting and I found my self rushing at points where I would have normally explained things a little more thoroughly.  I really look forward to trying out this presentation with a real French class where the students have at least had some experience with the language and getting (hopefully) better and more accurate results.  But I definitely think short little presentations like this will be a great addition to my classroom maybe not all the time but every once and a while to change things up a bit.

Data Visualization

Today I had the opportunity to play around with different visualization tools from Karl Gude's Wiki.  The great thing about this Wiki is that it is full of great FREE websites that any teacher no matter what subject could find a use for.  The three I chose to experiment with were PodOmatic, Glogster and Timetoast.  I chose these three because I thought they would be great to use in my foreign language classroom. 

PodOmatic is a great site for creating podcasts! I came across many issues when I created my first podcast using Garageband and even with Audacity.  However, after playing around on PodOmatic I found it very simple and easy to use! I appreciated the fact that it was just a website online rather than an application I had to download off the Internet (like Audacity) or purchase (like Garageband).  PodOmatic is not only great for creating both audio and video podcasts but also for viewing other podcasts you may relate to!

Next I tried out Glogster.  I'd heard of before but I'd never really explored the site before and boy am I glad I did! Glogster is a site where you or your students can create interactive posters aka Glogs that can include anything from text to pictures to audio and video!  I think this site would be amazing for projects! What a fun online activity to do with your students that not only heightens their creativity but also gets then working with technology!  In the future I would like to have my students use Glogster to create presentations about different French cities around the world.  Many students only think of France when they think of French but it is spoken in 29 different countries around the world!  This project would be a great way for them to not only experience the French language around the world but also to expose them to places they have probably never even heard of before.  The only downside to Glogster is that the free version is very basic as you can imagine, however, I think for a project like the one I want to do it would be worth paying the money to give my students such an amazing experience.

Timetoast is a free website where you can create interactive timelines that include pictures.  I could imagine this site would be great for history classes because you could create timelines of important events in history, give a description and even upload a picture.  For my purposes as a foreign language teacher the first thing that came to mind when I started exploring the site was how great it would be for projects.  Last year I did a project with my students where they created their own cooking show, it was a huge project that lasted over the span of a month and Spring Break fell right in the middle of our project prep time.  This site would've been a great way to organize our schedule for students to figure out how much time they had to complete their project.  I also think this would've been great for those many absent students right before and after Spring Break so they would know what they've missed.  Below is a link to the timeline I would have created last year for my students on Timetoast.  The only problem I came across with the site is that the embed codes weren't working for my timeline for whatever reason so I was forced to simply provide the link.

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/une-bonne-recette

Survey Results

My Wicked Problem Project focuses on teaching grammar in the foreign language classroom.  My hypothesis is that by teaching grammar following a Flipped Classroom model our students will connect more with the material and have a higher retention rate.  In order to get feedback from my fellow educators on this topic I created a survey using Google Forms.  A week later I was pleased to see that I received 13 responses to my survey! Below are my results:

For my survey I focused on getting feedback regarding the flipped classroom from my peers.  Seeing as I have no experience in a flipped classroom I wanted to see what others opinions were who have been apart of a flipped classroom in the past.  I began with a very basic question to see who had taken a foreign language class before.  Although many people may not know a second language the majority of my peers have at least taken a class before:

Next, I wanted to focus on the flipped classroom and see how many of my participants have had experience in this before:

After this question I inserted space for my participants to elaborate on the positives and negatives to the flipped classroom.  After reading through the responses there was a pretty equal balance between positive and negative comments.  The main positive that multiple people listed was that students have the ability to learn at their own pace and spend class time honing their skills.  The main negative that was mentioned was student motivation.  When we don't have the students in class during lectures how can we insure that they actually watch the lectures at home?  If the students don't have the motivation to complete the lectures at home we will end up spending class time going over the information yet again.

Finally, I wanted to see what my peers opinion was about implementing the flipped classroom within a foreign language classroom.  The results show that the majority were in favor of testing out this new idea.  A space was provided for my participants to explain why they thought it would or would not be beneficial and many thought it would be great to try because it will provide the much needed class time to practice and speak the language, which was exactly what I'm hoping will happen. 

Overall, I got great feedback from my survey and it was great to see that my peers were in support of my idea to solve my wicked problem.  I am going to use the feedback and ideas I received and begin to implement my wicked problem solution.  However, more feedback is always helpful! Feel free to complete my survey and give me any more helpful tips!

Group Leadership Project Presentation

For our Leadership Project my partner and I decided to create our Flipped PD Presentation on the technology tool Edmodo.  Edmodo is a great tool for all teachers whether they want to create a Flipped Classroom or not.   It provides a great platform for teachers to post assignments and quizzes for students to do as homework as well as a great storage space for resources and student work.

This presentation would be great for a professional development seminar.  Its a fairly short and concise video (4 minutes long) that could be presented to a room full of teachers to give them a new way to organize their classroom using technology.  I would suggest to have the teachers start off by trying Edmodo with one or two classes so they can get used to using it then gradually add on other classes if they like using Edmodo. 

In order to get feedback on the usefulness of our Flipped PD presentation I would like to have the teachers as well as the students fill out a survey giving their opinion and listing things that they like and did not like.  The feedback from the students will be especially helpful because they can compare their class before and after Edmodo.  Teachers could also compare their classes with and without Edmodo to see if Edmodo helps with students turning in assignments on time (since its all done online). 

Overall, I think that Edmodo is a great tool for us as educators to bring our classrooms outside of the four walls of the school building.  I hope you enjoy our presentation and find it useful for your classroom!