I've been testing, vetting, and curating digital resources since my first year of teaching in 2010. I was a brand new teacher in a 7th grade ELA classroom that was one to one with desktop computers. I wanted students to use those computers for typing essays and answers, sure, but I wanted them to use them for so much more. I saw so much potential. So that's when my search for free and high quality educational resources for students began. That was also right after teachers all across the state had gotten laid off the spring prior. There was not money for subscriptions, and first year teachers don't make a lot of money.
A few years later I became a technology leader in my building along with one of my friends and colleagues. We helped teachers see uses for our schools iPad cart, trained them on how to use them, found apps that they could use with their students, etc. That's when I started becoming a leader in educational technology. I saw how colleagues didn't always have the time or technological savvy to find resources or know how to use them. I wanted to help them. A year or two ago I decided to up my game with my professional Twitter account and grow my PLN. Why? Because I saw how many resources people were sharing. I had been saving
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This past winter my building was allotted funds to spend on technology improvements. We decided to spend a little over half of those funds on collaboration stations and the rest on starting a makerspace. (See how I planned the makerspace here and what we started with in it here.)
One of the educational technology tools I heard the most about this summer has been Flipgrid. I'd been meaning to check it out, and ISTE finally gave me the final push to sign up for a free version account.
Then, as chance would have it during ISTE, Matt Frattali Periscoped Jennifer Casa-Todd's talk on her Social Leadia book (which sounds amazing), which led me to Matt's Twitter and serendipitously to Vedchat, which he founded. I jumped at the chance to try out Flipgrid from the contributor's/student's end and responded to their week 9 post about ISTE reflections, and I've also responded to their week 10 post about Educational Leadership. (You can check out the current topic by going to www.vedchat.com.) When I first got ready to record my response for week 9, I had at least 4 redos until I was okay with it. I absolutely hate being filmed! But then the Vedchat community encouraged me to not overthink my posts, to just film once, and to add my Twitter handle as my name so we could follow each other. Genius! It's hard to not be overly critical of our own responses, but we need to remind ourselves that we are our own worst critics, and other people care more about our ideas and our contributing than they do about if we stumble over a word or took too long of a pause. |