Reflection 1 August 2016

It is officially the beginning of the 2016/2017 school year! It is the end of pre-service week, and I

am excited to see what this school year brings in my classroom and as a role of a leader in my

school. I met with Barb (my staff development teacher) and explained to her about my

technology internship. I discussed my big picture goal of wanting to help teachers in our school

about different technology tools, and having them use meaningful technology with their

students. I talked to her about leading macro sessions at staff meetings, and micro sessions

with my first grade team in our planning meetings. Barb loved all of my ideas and is a big

enthusiast of finding innovative ways for children to learn. She was very excited to learn about

screencasting specifically. I also spoke with my teammates at one of our meetings about my

internship. One of my teammates got her masters in Ed. Tech from University of Maryland

several years ago, another teammate graduated a few years ago and learned a lot about

technology in undergrad., my two other teammates don't have as much experience with using

technology but are eager to learn. Im feeling really positive about my internship after hearing

the excitement from my team and Barb. I am hoping I can really make an impact on the

teachers at my school, and in turn make an impact on students learning.

Reflection 2 September/October 2016

The start of the school year is always so busy and hectic! I am really enjoying my new students,

and excited to see them grow throughout the year. I spoke to Dr. Pastor (my principal) about my

internship this week. It was a very brief discussion, but she seemed excited to see what I could

help our staff with and encouraged me to talk with Barb about professional development

sessions, which I have already done.

It's the middle of September and I was able to create and send out a survey to the school about

teachers use of technology in the classroom. Although I did not get a response from every
teacher in our building, I was pleasantly surprised that a little over half of the staff completed the

survey. As expected from the interviews I conducted last year as a part of my action plan

assignment the results of the survey were all over the board. I am hoping that I can really help

teachers to navigate Google Apps, and introduce new technology tools to teachers who are

already experienced using Google Apps.

I met with Barb about the survey, and we discussed using Google docs this year for our SLOs

(Student Learning Objectives). I told her I thought it was a great idea, and shared that it will be

easy to share with her and our team and all the updates we make will be updated automatically

and we won't need to re-send them. She wants me to go over google docs and how to share

documents with the staff at next week's meeting.

I helped run part of the staff meeting with Barb yesterday. We discussed how we will all be

using Google Docs for our SLOs this year. We went over how to get into their MCPS google

account, how to access documents shared with them, how to make a copy, how to share a

document, and the basics of navigating Google docs. I created a brief screencast on navigating

Google docs for the school to have access to if needed throughout the year. I would say about

more than half of the staff were comfortable with everything we shared, but we still had a lot of

questions and uncertainty from some staff. Overall, I think it went really well. I actually enjoyed

helping to lead this session with Barb.

We are already into October and I was able to run a team meeting with Barb about Google

Slides. We introduced an animal project that my students were working on using Google Slides.

One of my teammates was really shocked that my students were able to log into google and

navigate google slides pretty independently. I told them as long as you model step by step
several times, and make sure you can have your co-teacher in the computer lab with you it is

very possible. I explained how excited and engaged my students were so far in the process.

Another teammate wanted to do the project with her students too. After showing them the

project I showed them how to use Google Slides. I also made a screencast for them to have to

look back on if needed. I feel good about the feedback I got from my team, and confident that

some will use Google Slides with their class this year.

Reflection 3 November/December 2016

November is one of the busiest months of the school year! It's almost Thanksgiving break, time

for our big first grade Thanksgiving feast, and close to the end of quarter 1. With all that being

said, there wasn't much time for much professional development this month. Staff meetings

have been filled with evaluating and looking at math data since math is our schools focus this

year. In ET 620 last year we learned about creating digital stories. As an assignment for that

class I created a digital story about the first Thanksgiving to share with my students. The past

few years we have done a Thanksgiving project that goes along with our culture unit. I shared

the digital story I made using Shadow Puppet with my team. I then showed them Shadow

Puppet and how to navigate it. They liked my digital story about the idea of digital storytelling,

but didn't seem like they wanted to create one themselves. We all have a lot on our plates right

now so I am hoping that after winter break they will be more open to the idea of making a digital

story.

We are about a week away from winter break! The school year is already going by so fast. We

have been busy administering MIRL (monthly instructional reading levels), and putting in our

data, as well as continuing a book study on the book Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler. I am

feeling a little discouraged about the lack of professional development this month. I created a list

of some of the tech tools and resources I have learned about over the last year to share with my
staff. I sent it out on our schools private e-mail so everyone could have access to it. I made

sure that if anyone had any specific questions about any of the tech tools or resources to

contact me, and I would be happy to help. I received a lot of thank you for sharing e-mails, but

only one question which came from a teammate about Google classroom. We have a meeting

set up when we get back from break to go over Google classroom. Im happy that my team is so

open to learning about new things!

Reflection 4 January/February 2017

We are all returning from break feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the school year!

I spoke with Barb about Toia (one of my teammates) wanting to learn more about how to use

Google Classroom. She thought it would be beneficial for all of my team to hear, so we decided

to include it in our next team meeting next week. Barb has helped other staff members use

Google Classroom so she was happy to do this with me.

Yesterday, was our team meeting where we discussed Google Classroom. Barb and I shared

how I used it with the animal project, and how it went smoothly. We demonstrated how to set up

a class and some of the functions of Google Classroom. Three of the five first grade teachers

(including me) have used Google Classroom before. Toia was excited to set up her class and

use it for a future assignment/project. My other teammate is about to retire and told us she

doesn't see herself using it. I was able to create a screencast for my team reviewing how to set

up a class on Google Classroom. It seems that running micro sessions with my team has been

easiest way to complete my internship. Although Dr. Pastor approved my internship she is

wanting to focus more on math and data. Luckily Barb is still on board with helping me run PD

with my team.
I met with Barb this morning to discuss the rest of what I wanted to cover for my internship since

I will be wrapping it up in a couple months. I told her that number one of my list is screencasting.

As I mentioned in a previous reflection, she is really excited to learn about this tool. We set up a

meeting for March with just her and I where I can show her how to use screencastomatic. We

will set up a meeting to share with my team after our meeting.

Reflection 5 March/April 2017

My meeting with Barb yesterday morning went really well. She loves the idea of screencasting,

and using it in the classroom. We agree that it will be very beneficial for the upper grades who

are 1:1 with Chromebooks. She wants to share screencasts with the third grade team and how

students could use it in math. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be there for it since I will be

teaching during their planning time. Since our school has a math focus this year we came up

with the idea that students could take a picture of a math problem they completed on their

Chromebook then make a screencast to explain all of their steps. This will allow teachers to

better assess their students math skills. We also talked about having a screencast session with

my team and how we could use it with parents, students, and each other.

It's the end of April and my internship is coming to a close. This month I introduced screencasts

to my team with Barb. One of my teammates already knew how to use it, and was able to chime

in too. We discussed making a screencast on Class Dojo for parents next year, and exploring

our students using using it to go along with their Google Slides presentations. Unfortunately we

won't have Chromebooks in our rooms, but Barb said we should be able to check out a small

set if we need to.

I felt like even though my internship did not go as planned at all, it was still some what

successful. I was able to help the whole school use Google Docs, and introduced a lot of great
technology to my team. Although my team didnt implement everything I've showed them this

year, a few of my teammates have used a few things and I think its a great start.