....Lies many more open doors. It's a domino effect. A valuable lesson I have learned from taking the risk of applying for the Fund For Teachers Grant. Putting yourself out there for rejection but also for the possibility of success is something that can't be taught...but it can be modeled. And as we get deeper into the school year, our failures and success, our journey of learning is proving invaluable to our students. Our Fund For Teachers Grant has inspired us to want more for ourselves and our students. And we have gotten more!
We have been busy since the summer. We were both blown away by the reflective power of blogging while in Ireland, and we were very determined to bring this into our classroom. Our motivation to bring in the blog has morphed into a greater drive to learn more about and bring into the classroom 21st century skills. Earlier this year, we wrote a grant proposal for a classroom set of iPods. We received our iPods on Tuesday...and the collective excitement from our students was noticeable! Our purpose originally was to allow students to blog their metacognition of reading. However, since then, we have thought of many more ways to use this in the classroom. We also want our students to collaboratively make sense of social studies by creating and maintaining a wiki. We want students to provide each other feedback on their metacognition blogs and wikis. We are using some iPods on Friday and Monday to have them watch iMovies that we created while we were in Ireland as a research tool. Our motivation for blogging also inspired us to apply for our district's technology E2T2 grant. This is a cohort of middle school teachers who had to apply to become a part of it. Here we are learning aboutt 21st Century Skills...and how to apply those skills into our teaching, and expectations of our students.
So here we are...starting a new journey of learning that was born from our journey to Ireland. One open door leads to many other open doors. I can only imagine what will open to me from this journey!
We are closing this blog in order to open a new blog that will chronicle the journey we take with the E2T2 Grant. Be sure to follow us, as we journal our learning and our experiences with our students!
Noel's blog: "Journey Into the 21st Century" mrsfalksjourney.blogspot.com
Stephanie's blog: "Thinking about technology" sgallegostechthinking.blogspot.com
Noel
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