Stephanie Feeman Education 776 Blog

Getting Started with Snapchat in Your Classroom Okay, so I read the title of this article and was like "No way, no how!" My students are third graders so I don't often have problems with them being on their phones, but I also coach Jr. High Girls' Basketball and it is like pulling teeth to get these girls off of their phones. They are always on Snapchat sending weird pictures and silly things to their friends, and their friends are usually in the same room. I use Snapchat as well and I do exactly the same thing. When I think of Snapchat, the last place I think of it is in the classroom. I use it as a mindless way to de-stress after a long day of work. However, then I read the article, and the same juices that start to flow when I get lesson ideas in my mind began to flow again. There are so many ways that Snapchat can actually be used effectively in the classroom. This was something that I never would've believed, had I not read how successful it has been show...

photo courtesy of learninginhand.com As I look back on the last eight weeks of this class, I feel like I can totally rearrange the way I teach in my classroom. Before this class, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on how to use technology in the classroom and what kind of resources I had available to me. I was pleasantly surprised by how much was out there that I didn't know about. This class allowed me to explore different resources I had never heard of, resources I had heard of but didn't have time to explore, and old resources that had been reborn.  Technology is incredibly important in a 21st Century Classroom. Students in classrooms today have grown up with technology as a 6th sense. Traditional classroom strategies have become outdated and unnecessary. I took this class because I felt that I could learn something about how to use technology in my classroom differently. I had some resources that I used in the classroom that were effective, but the internet is so big...

Photo courtesy of Internet Identity Workshop I think it is also interesting to see what others can see when searching for me. I was watching a movie once where a character asked another, "Did you Google yourself?" I never knew this, but apparently it is a new trend to search yourself online and see what your web presence is like. I fell into the social hole, and "googled myself." As you have found out over these last few weeks, I am a pretty private person and don't like to have a lot of my information out in the open for all to see and judge. I am also a teacher and coach, and I know all of my students and basketball players are able to google search me and find out certain things. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my web presence is pretty minimal. I know that as educators in the 21st century we should have a web presence that reflects our classroom and makes it easy for community members to get in touch or get to know me. I am working on my pr...

This week I created a tutorial on how to use nearpod. This is a new web tool 2.0 that I came across recently. My dad actually introduced it to me months ago but I hadn't found the time to explore it until taking Education 776. This is actually one of the best resources I have found on the internet to use in the classroom. Nearpod is an interactive lesson that is done all online. Students using 1-1 devices participate in the lesson and explore from their seats as you explore from the board. The website allows you to create your own lesson or use one of the thousand different lessons in the Nearpod library. While I was getting to know this tool, I was amazed by how many different FREE lessons are available to use in the classroom. The library allows you to search by grade level, standard, subject, or type of activity. As a really busy teacher, I love that they give me ready to use lessons instead of just the option to create my own lesson. Lessons are interactive and encoura...

I had the opportunity to create a twitter account. I was never aware of all of the different resources available to me through twitter. I always viewed twitter as another social media network that was designed to share funny memes and silly stories. I never thought that I could actually learn things about teaching and different things to try in the classroom. I looked through and began following several different twitter accounts. The best account/resource that I found was Mindshift. Its twitter handle is @mindshiftkqed and it shares the most interesting things. This resource focuses on shifting our brains from traditional ways of learning to more progressive ways of thinking. I think during this time in history, it is incredibly important for everyone to shift the way they have thought about teaching and education, and move towards the future. This Twitter account embeds a growth mindset across all areas of education. I think I was so interested in this particular resource beca...