With so much technology available to us as teachers, how can we best integrate this while ensuring it is advancing our students learning? It seems I find a new app or website everyday that would work in my classroom but with so many options, trial and error and frankly user error, how can I best integrate these tools without overwhelming myself and my students?
This fall I have high aspirations for much more technology integration not only to help me and my classroom management, but to also help student learning while striving to hit those top two levels of the SAMR model. Do I choose one website for my management and one for student learning and get good at those before adding more, or do I dive in and try using four or five of my ideas and stumble through them all at the same time? Do I choose just one subject to integrate the technology into or go full boar and add it across all content areas? I also want to try flipping my classroom in the subject of math this fall. This will require new technology for myself and my students. Is this enough to keep me busy and I shouldn't worry about anything else?
With all of these questions it is hard to know where to start and how much to tackle. There are at least six ideas I want to integrate with my classroom this year, and as I research I know there will be more. The ones so fare are:
Edmodo
ePals
Educreations
Google Classroom
Class Chatter
Khan Academy
I want to dive in but I also want to do well at my new technology integration. With the first week of school being a "get to know you" week and not much content typically, this may be a good time to try things like google classroom and class chatter. I am feeling overwhelmed with the flipping idea as students will need 4 weekly videos of direct instruction. I am hoping that Khan Academy can help to supplement so I am not creating so many videos each week. I haven't even figured out how I am creating them and sharing them with students yet. After writing all of this down, I am feeling like baby steps is the best way to go. Integrate one thing and get good at it, then add one more and get good at using both of those before adding a third. Maybe I only do one flipped lesson a week until I get comfortable with it.
Any insight, comments or suggestions are always welcome during my technology journey!