Reflection

Upon completing my Google Fundamentals training, I feel even more prepared to go into the new school year. I was already incorporating technology into my classroom each year, but I feel as if I will be much more efficient at using it in the future. When we return to school my students and parents will have access to a Google Site for each of my classes. I also plan to create a Calendar for each class and share it on my site so students and parents will be aware of due dates for their assignments. I can't wait to implement the lesson that I created this summer in my World History class.

The interactive lesson I created using Google Earth and Google Docs has me really excited to see how they respond and if they will enjoy working on it as much as I enjoyed making it. Exploring Google Earth was by far my favorite part of this experience. Teaching in an area with such a high poverty rate, I am excited to introduce them to these lessons and using Google Earth to help them explore areas they may never get to see in real life.  It was challenging finding time to add information to my website as I stated in both of my other lessons. I feel like on several sections of this site, I repeated myself especially on the reviews and then reflecting on my assessments. All in all though, I am glad that I completed this trainging and plan to go further with Google Training. 

Class Reflection #1: I am doing the Google and YouTube mix and match pathway. I have completed the entire first unit and part of the second for a total of about 2 hours. I am really interested in the online lessons for helping students behave responsibly on the internet. Teaching high school students who have grown up online, it seems we almost expect them to know how to operate and behave, but that could not be farther from the truth. I am interested in implementing some of these lessons as a warm up lesson in the coming school year. 

I plan to create an interactive group project over ancient civilizations for my students to collaborate on. It will most likely be through google slides. I hope to learn more about how to create interactive lessons that I can utilize in my classroom. 

The lessons themselves have not been very challenging, but I have found it difficult to remember to do reflections on my website after each one. I am going to go back and do those this week. I also plan to layout a plan on a calendar so that I can manage my time more effectively. It has been difficult finding time when my kids are with me constantly since it is summer and they don't think they should have a bedtime so I can do my school work. Creating my Google Site was also a challenge. I had a hard time making it public so other people could access it, but after submitting it three times it finally worked!

I have been most interested in exploring new technology websites that I can incorporate in my classroom such as the digital citizen lessons or flippity.net. I also found it interesting that one teacher actually used Wikipedia for students to find differences on that website and within their textbook. That was a new look at Wikipedia. I always tell my kids to STAY AWAY! :) 

Class Reflection #2: I have finished my google training. We covered google meets, going paperless, helping to stay organized, and several other topics. My favorite was the Google Earth lesson and building more interactive lessons for my students. It really made me think of ways to incorporate google earth with my history lessons. I plan to create an assignment centered around a travel agency and different groups developing a group tour of different sights from ancient civilizations. I also plan to create a website for each of my classes to help with communication. I do not sure social media, so I find it difficult sometimes to get information to all of my parents at one time. I think that by creating a website and putting my information on there, it will take care of a lot of communication issues that I have. 

I am working on my YouTube hours now. I am about half way finished with it, so I have about 2.5 hours of training left. This has helped me because I plan to create YouTube videos in the future to review for the US History EOC and going through the copyright information will be beneficial to creating content. 

One thing that I have found challenging is adding information to by website. I have found that when I am working on the different units, it was easier to complete if I kept working. I was always afraid to go and add information to the website at the end of each unit, because I didn't want to lose the momentum on completing the units and reviews. I took screenshots of each time that I passed a unit review so I could add it to my assessment page within my site, but that was as far I went while going through the different units. I have since added the screenshots and I am going back and adding my unit reviews for Google today.