Teacher Inservice: Round Two!

My lucky students did not have classes last Friday while I and my fellow teachers spent the (beautiful) day inside for teacher inservice. What I would have traded to be in their places!!

We began the morning with two technology break out sessions of our choice; I attended one about Edmodo and another about Google Drive-Student Collaboration. What fabulous tools!!! I could spend a whole blog post on each, but I do not have the time to write all that up, and I'm sure you don't have all that time to read about them! ;) Both were presented by fellow colleagues at the high school, which made them even more appealing because I have experts in the building to help me figure them out, haha! I created an Edmodo profile (which looks quite similar to Facebook, thank goodness) and have started created quizzes and test on Google Drive so I can share them with my cooperating teachers. The real kicker is that we can work on them at the same time!! How cool is that?!

Though I definitely loved these morning sessions, it is difficult to figure out how to start implementing things mid-semester. I plan to spend lots of my summer getting ready for my 5th graders in Egypt this fall by preparing materials and setting up all the technology I want to use ahead of time.

Mid-morning through most of the afternoon, I worked with my cooperating teachers on their Student Learning Objectives (SLO's). These documents squandered away the majority of our independent time on busywork. I'm a firm believer in work for the sake of getting better, not just work for the sake of work. Unfortunately, SLO's are definitely the latter. Averaging test scores and comparing class averages and tracking student improvement took more time than anything else- I'm an English teacher, not a mathematician!

At the very end of the day I started creating a test for my English 10 students and the unit that we're currently working through. They're reading a variety of essays, short stories, and speeches from various authors and time periods which all fall under the umbrella theme of tolerance. Google drive has been infinitely helpful as both my cooperating teacher and I add questions and ideas on the document after school and on the weekend. What a great tool for sharing ideas! Overall, I'd say this inservice made me want more independent time to practice and ask more questions about these wonderful technology tools, which is definitely a good thing!! :)