Teacher's Assistant Pro A MUST HAVE FOR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT!!!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/teachers-assistant-pro-track/id391643755?mt=8

I have been using this app for almost three years and it has been a classroom management miracle for me and now many others in my school.  This app tracks student behaviors and is very user friendly.  As a teacher, you can quickly add and take away points for good or bad behaviors.  As a high school Career Tech teacher, a large portion of their overall grade is their Employability grade.  Through this app, I have customized the actions to the exact behaviors I want to see and the ones I don’t want to see, and each of them have a point value attached to them either positive or negative.  At the beginning of the semester, I hook up my iPad to the projector and show all my students the behaviors I want to see and those that I don’t want to see, and how many points will be taken or given if they choose to exhibit those behaviors.  I’ve attached a screen shot of one of my previous students where you can see the actions that were taken with him on the left, and on the right a list of actions that I could choose to give him.  Notice how each action has a point value attached to it, so when you select the action it automatically factors the points in, and these are all completely customizable.  As you can see you can take a picture of the student that stays in the app so you can more quickly put a name with a face.  My students can earn 15 employability points a week, 3 points a day, so with one action that takes away 3 points actually equals an employability grade of zero for that day.  Also as you can see, if I notice them encouraging a classmate in a task they earn an extra 3 points, which is basically an extra 100.  Every action you input is time and date stamped, so you can go weeks without recording their grade in the grade book.  I just have my iPad on my desk and if I observe an inappropriate behavior, I just pick it up and with the push of a few buttons I’m finished, but while I do that you can hear a pin drop in the classroom because everyone is wondering if it’s them or not, and I don’t say a word and keep right on going with the class.  And when I observe positive behaviors I pick it up, them honor that student in front of the class while I award them extra points.  It’s the best $5.99 I’ve ever spent for anything in my class before.  I have turned over a dozen teachers in my school on to it and it has changed the way they approach classroom management.  This is a key element to the classroom management system that I’ve created called “The Culture of Honor.”  Please ask me any questions you have about the program, because I know it pretty well!
KSU­‐EDL7510 / KSU‐ITEC

 

Classroom 2.0 PD Online Session & Podcast

I listened to an online professional development session that was given on February 21 on Classroom 2.0 Live.  The featured speaker was Mary Beth Hertz.  She is a technology teacher that has experience teaching elementary and high school students.  She seems to be a great educator with lots of great ideas.  Here are the notes I took from the session.

Her curriculum had these four pillars:  communicate, evaluate, collaborate and create.

Made a scope and sequence for each grade with these pillars in mind which include:

Online safety digital citizenship, programming , digital storytelling, office tools, research,  basic technology concepts and operations.

For digital citizenship she used Infinite Learning Lab.

Then she got net books after the mac lab and it was wonderful, it was easy to get around to all of the students, instead of them being in rows.

Teaching High School:  everything is based off of essential questions and learning goals and everyone one of her students have a notebook computer.

Students are responsible for going to the right sites and not going to the wrong sites.  Students are given a lot of freedom but expectations and responsibilities are communicated a lot.  The freedom can be a blessing and a curse with some that have very little access to tech and some have a ton so you have all different levels.

Compare/Contrast Elem & HS

Elem: more guided, less time, most tools required a teacher account, hard to integrate homeroom content into lab lessons

HS: “figure it out”, more time, students use their GAFE accounts, lessons more easily applied to other classes.

Reflection:  learned a lot from elementary in how to teach HS, especially in regard to classroom management.

Participants then asked questions to Mary Beth.

Overall, I feel like I learned a lot from being a part of this online professional development session.
KSU­‐EDL7510 / KSU‐ITEC

Using cell phones in the classroom....besides being a distraction!!!

This article contains so great ideas on how to use students' smart phones to enhance learning.

http://elearningindustry.com/texting-in-the-classroom-change-distraction-engagement
KSU­‐EDL7510 / KSU‐ITEC

Bringing Executive Directors into Public Schools

KSU­‐EDL7510 / KSU‐ITEC