Once it starts...
There is no stopping forward progress.
If I had to summarize the impact of my experience with TLP in a sentence, I suppose that would be it.
Traipsing into the classroom for the first of my TLP workshop days in August (which became as much of a treat as free Dairy Godmother) and looking around at the faces of those who would be my peers in this venture, I tried not to allow my face to betray what I was thinking: How did I manage to gain entry into this program??
As a teacher, prior to that first day of TLP, I had tried to use technology in my classroom. After all, I had a Smart Board and my students used laptops sometimes; but in no way did I consider myself an exceptional user of educational technology. So in I walked to the first day of TLP, knowing my secret: that I wasn't a technology superstar like I felt like everyone else must have been, and feeling starry-eyed but a little intimidated about what was to come.
Flash forward to the end of those three magical days, and I think I had experienced the full range of human emotion: I had felt my heart fill to bursting with the joy I derived from the visions dancing in my head of children blogging, creating online projects, using iPads, and interacting through edmodo. I had reached overload and nearly gave up hope in ever becoming a Technology Superstar (like my peers already were). I had finally reached a balance of thinking of just a few things I might like to try...for now. In those three days, I laughed, I cried, I felt joy and pain, peace and rejuvenation.
As the year progressed, I found that technology was always on my mind in class. I wanted my kids to use it. Whatever mysterious power those first three days of TLP had had left a pretty permanent stain on my memory, so I found myself wanting to try one thing after another with my kids in class. In my everyday language arts class, I began finding ways that I could infuse technology where my kids originally used pen and paper, and with each consecutive structure or program I'd introduce to my kids, I found myself on the lookout for another. It was almost like there was some sort of mental domino effect going on with technology in my classroom: one thing would lead to another, to another, and so on. I watched in awe as students who never spoke out in class eagerly wrote to each other and to me on Edmodo; I gave them immediate feedback online about their responses and they were able to adapt their work and show their learning right then and there. They evaluated the maturation of their own responses on Edmodo throughout the year as they tracked their response history, noting themselves developing into mature globally online learners. I saw students who struggle in writing brilliantly present persuasive papers through Prezi. The power of my students using technology to learn was so fulfilling that it became almost a self-perpetuating habit.
Even despite my students' increased use of technology, however, due to my overwhelm at the beginning of the year, I still sat at mid-year scratching my head as to what would be the focus of my learning through TLP. The only thing I had ever decided for sure was that I wanted the kids to use technology in class, not just me as it had been for the years prior; and they were already doing that. When I went to one of our amazing TLP sessions, however, my lightbulb went off when I sat in on a global education mini-session and my mind was blown. All of a sudden, I was flooded with visions of my children interacting with students from other places, learning from their perspectives and sharing their own learning. I was inspired by the thought of students gaining international perspectives -- something I consider crucial to their development as well-rounded global citizens -- and I knew at that point that my project would revolve around global learning, somehow. After joining Twitter and the Global Classroom project (please see my resources page), I started to formulate my idea: I wanted my children to use historical fiction literature to learn about the Holocaust - a terrible time that had a global impact - and share and learn from the perspectives of children from other places about the same event. Luckily, at my school we have an Intersession, a time for deep exploration into particular topics, so I found the timing of our winter intersession, 2 weeks in January, to be just right for my project. The rest of this site is dedicated to that project; I hope you will enjoy learning about what we did as much as we enjoyed doing it!
And now, here I stand at the end of a school year looking back, and I can say that all of my mental dominoes have fallen and been re-aligned. That is, my experience with TLP has revolutionized my students' every day in the classroom.
If I had to summarize the impact of my experience with TLP in a sentence, I suppose that would be it.
Traipsing into the classroom for the first of my TLP workshop days in August (which became as much of a treat as free Dairy Godmother) and looking around at the faces of those who would be my peers in this venture, I tried not to allow my face to betray what I was thinking: How did I manage to gain entry into this program??
As a teacher, prior to that first day of TLP, I had tried to use technology in my classroom. After all, I had a Smart Board and my students used laptops sometimes; but in no way did I consider myself an exceptional user of educational technology. So in I walked to the first day of TLP, knowing my secret: that I wasn't a technology superstar like I felt like everyone else must have been, and feeling starry-eyed but a little intimidated about what was to come.
Flash forward to the end of those three magical days, and I think I had experienced the full range of human emotion: I had felt my heart fill to bursting with the joy I derived from the visions dancing in my head of children blogging, creating online projects, using iPads, and interacting through edmodo. I had reached overload and nearly gave up hope in ever becoming a Technology Superstar (like my peers already were). I had finally reached a balance of thinking of just a few things I might like to try...for now. In those three days, I laughed, I cried, I felt joy and pain, peace and rejuvenation.
As the year progressed, I found that technology was always on my mind in class. I wanted my kids to use it. Whatever mysterious power those first three days of TLP had had left a pretty permanent stain on my memory, so I found myself wanting to try one thing after another with my kids in class. In my everyday language arts class, I began finding ways that I could infuse technology where my kids originally used pen and paper, and with each consecutive structure or program I'd introduce to my kids, I found myself on the lookout for another. It was almost like there was some sort of mental domino effect going on with technology in my classroom: one thing would lead to another, to another, and so on. I watched in awe as students who never spoke out in class eagerly wrote to each other and to me on Edmodo; I gave them immediate feedback online about their responses and they were able to adapt their work and show their learning right then and there. They evaluated the maturation of their own responses on Edmodo throughout the year as they tracked their response history, noting themselves developing into mature globally online learners. I saw students who struggle in writing brilliantly present persuasive papers through Prezi. The power of my students using technology to learn was so fulfilling that it became almost a self-perpetuating habit.
Even despite my students' increased use of technology, however, due to my overwhelm at the beginning of the year, I still sat at mid-year scratching my head as to what would be the focus of my learning through TLP. The only thing I had ever decided for sure was that I wanted the kids to use technology in class, not just me as it had been for the years prior; and they were already doing that. When I went to one of our amazing TLP sessions, however, my lightbulb went off when I sat in on a global education mini-session and my mind was blown. All of a sudden, I was flooded with visions of my children interacting with students from other places, learning from their perspectives and sharing their own learning. I was inspired by the thought of students gaining international perspectives -- something I consider crucial to their development as well-rounded global citizens -- and I knew at that point that my project would revolve around global learning, somehow. After joining Twitter and the Global Classroom project (please see my resources page), I started to formulate my idea: I wanted my children to use historical fiction literature to learn about the Holocaust - a terrible time that had a global impact - and share and learn from the perspectives of children from other places about the same event. Luckily, at my school we have an Intersession, a time for deep exploration into particular topics, so I found the timing of our winter intersession, 2 weeks in January, to be just right for my project. The rest of this site is dedicated to that project; I hope you will enjoy learning about what we did as much as we enjoyed doing it!
And now, here I stand at the end of a school year looking back, and I can say that all of my mental dominoes have fallen and been re-aligned. That is, my experience with TLP has revolutionized my students' every day in the classroom.