My 20% project for our class was to learn how to use and create new pages on my website in order to reach out to my parents and students in the classroom. I wanted to be able to take the learning that happened in the classroom outside of Room 101’s walls. I chose this to be my 20% project for many reasons, but #1 being that I wanted this project to directly impact my students. I am enrolled in the Technology Cohort so that I may engage and inspire my students to be able to look beyond the textbooks and into what our future will be bringing us. My students are constantly on the computer exploring. This is their world. I wanted to make my classroom website a friendly, safe, and comfortable place for my students to be. I added the following pages to my website: Parent Resources, Screencasts, a revamped Student Links Page, Class Notes, (for homework items), Class Photos, Class Projects, Challenge Projects, and I learned how to create my own Conference Sign-Up. My students are constantly telling me that they were on the website last night and that they loved certain games or screencasts, etc… I have had other students in the school comment on my website and I don’t even know who they are!
The NETS*S standard, “Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments”, was met as the students were able to use my webpage at home or at school. I created an environment for learning outside the classroom walls. The students used many of the screencasts to help them with their homework, they showed their parents pictures of activities that were completed at school, and they used many of the links to expand their learning and curiosities. I think their assessment of this standard was when my class created their own Google Sites and wanted everything on their site that I had on my own classroom website.
The NETS*S standard, “Model Digital-Age Work and Learning”, was met as I explored many web tools that are out there and implemented them into my website. I created a Voki, Screencast, imported a Power Point into a Google presentation, added pages, created forms, embedded Smilebox photos, and embedded student projects for parents to view. Most if not all of these tools engage students or create a polished project for learning that is taking place in the classroom.
The NETS*S standard, “Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership”, was met as I learned about so many of the latest web tools in this Tech Cohort and implemented them directly into my classroom. I engaged in Professional Growth as I reached out to parents and students and connected them directly to my classroom. I pushed myself to try new things and the students benefited greatly. I took on many Leadership qualities as I was able to facilitate learning in our school and cooperatively work with my colleagues on different projects.
The 20% Project allowed me to gain a confidence in technology that I have never felt before. I am no longer afraid to try new things and I have noticed that I also can figure things out pretty easily. Once you start playing around with new web tools and websites you become very familiar with programs and they start to work the same. I feel so confident and purposeful. I also get so excited that I don’t have to call our tech specialist all the time when something doesn’t work correctly. I often can figure it out. My favorite part about my 20% project is that it had a positive affect on the students in my classroom. They benefited so greatly from my experiences because they are doing so much with technology. Today was the best example of that when I said to my students, “Ok, save that picture in the “Z” drive and then insert it into your website. That is all I said and about 10 of the 25 did it automatically, even though there was about 5 steps in between that. Then they walked around and helped each other. This is a classroom that I want to be a part of.
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