TPACK Quest

Hey everyone! I just wanted to review/discuss some of the Cup of Wisdom "Badges" that I completed over the duration of this tech course. They were all enlightening, engaging, and educational, but these are three that really stood out to me and helped form some of my new edu skills I will will utilize when I am teaching. 

PBL - Project Based Learning Badge

The overall point of this badge is for teacher candidates to "demonstrate an understanding of the structure of a Project-Based Lesson" and how to implement that lesson using tech-enhanced activities. My favourite portion of this badge was the "Teaching With Projects". It emulates everything great about blended learning. I used the tool "Popplet" to construct a flowchart of a Project-Based Lesson. The project I chose to organize via Popplet is called "315" (a group style project). It is a language arts project that utilizes technology such as audio recording and video editing, as well as story writing. Students can use the same online tools to organize their plan for their 315 project. Thus, I enhanced my communication and creativity when planning the lesson, and students enhance their skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, revision, authenticity, communication, problem solving, and creativity, through the project.

Digizen Badge

The Digizen Badge is extremely important and relevant to being a teacher in the 21st century. Students are so tech savvy from such a young age, and so exposed to a variety of online forums, social media platforms, etc. I believe it is our responsibility as educators to educate our students on the possible dangers with the online world as much as we should celebrate the opportunities the online world provides. This badge focuses on Copyright, Cybersafety, and Digital Citizenship. For Copyright, I literally had no prior knowledge about how serious and relevant copyright is. It was great to be able to practice searching for CC images and how to properly cite said images in our work as teachers. This has taught me how to integrate CC media into my lesson plans, to ensure I am teaching honestly. Considering I had little prior knowledge, it will be great to run similar activities with my students and educate them on the world of copyright and collaboration. Cybersafety is always a big topic of conversation, and that is for a very good reason. For this part of the badge I wrote a brief report on a great resource that discusses cyber safety. I have added that resource into my resource curation to ensure I can use it again in the classroom to teach about cybersafety. Finally, Digital Citizenship, helped me learn how to help students learn about safety and privacy while on the Internet. Post-completing this badge, I immediately vetted my own social media sites to ensure I have a professional online identity that is portrayed to the world.

Problem-Based Learning Badge

This badge seemed a bit overwhelming at first because of all the different facets to it. However, upon completion I realized that though it was dense, it provided me with a ton of knowledge and options to use in my future blended classroom. I found myself doing all of the bonus points, because I knew I was bettering my personal development and learning. The overall objective is to understand the structure of a Problem-Based Learning Lesson, and how to implement that lesson using tech-enhanced activities. In terms of activities there are WebQuests, journals + Ezines, surveys & polls, timelines, trading cards, and infographics & digital galleries. The survey is a great way to get student feedback, track student assessment, and also simply teach about surveys. The WebQuests are great alternative ways to not just teach lessons, but let students teach themselves the lessons using inquiry. This fosters student independence, engagement, and motivation.