Research Presentation

I wrote a long post and was very negative about my Action Research Project.

I just finished it yesterday, presentation and all, and next Saturday, I will be graduating.

I don't think my ARP post that I deleted added anything to the discussion; I may write another post of how it could have been improved, but I've decided that I need to distance myself from these feelings first.

I also got to go to the CSD Spring Virtual Conference for the Discovery Education Network, and am very excited about all the possibilities for my future classroom.

I can't wait for the moment to come that I will have my own classroom, and this summer will be amazing with all the professional development I'll be taking.

I'm going to at least one AP Institute for US History, a presentation at the St. Louis Fed for AP Economics, and I'm attempting to register for another AP Institute for US Government.  We'll see how it goes.

Have a great rest of the weekend.

The First Day...

Of the rest of my life.

Two things happened today that are (what I hope to be) defining moments of my career.

1) I had an interview with Wentzville School District.  I won't go into it too much, but I do want to say I am fairly confident in my interview.  I could have done some things better, especially something that a former teacher told me to do, which is to include real examples of how I teach.  I included some information about using Google Maps to do really neat things, and this idea for a wiki for my US History kids, which I'll flesh out in another blog post, but there were a few where I felt myself slipping into education jargon.

2) I submitted my portfolio and action research paper.  These are intertwined, specifically since I was waiting to finish my paper to submit my portfolio, but my paper has been the focus of my internship.  I researched various vocabulary acquisition methods, and I think I definitely want to include options for my students when they get vocab in my classes.  At the end of this week, I am giving a presentation on my paper up at Truman, along with the other secondary social studies teachers, and I'm interested to see what they've come up with.

Anyway, I'm off to explore more!

The Start of Something

This past weekend has been a true whirlwind of experiences.  I've explored lots of what Google Apps has to offer, but the more I read, the more I realize just how little I know.  I already have some awesome ideas for how I can implement some apps into my classroom, and it energizes me for the next year.

Some other cool things I've learned about and I thought I'd share for anyone who is also starting out:

LiveBinder: This allows you to put websites in "binders" and add comments to the pages.  This is a great resource for bookmarking and sorting pages, but I can also see myself using portfolio assessments using this.  You can add videos, PDFs, and more.

Alltop: Think of this as a collection of really popular blogs, and you get to customize it.  You can aggregate these blogs individually, or you can put it on your Alltop, and then share your Alltop with others.

I've used these two resources heavily this weekend, helping me keep all the cool websites and blogs in order, and I can't wait to dig in this summer and start planning some awesome things for my students.  Now if only I can get a job!

Alex