Thursday, July 23, 2015

My Favorite Pinnacle Takeaways

Whew....What a week!  There are so many things that were learned this week it's hard to pin-point just a few.  I truly enjoyed collaborating with other teachers to see what great things they were doing in their classrooms and trying to adapt those ideas as my own.  The snacks were amazing as was lunch on Thursday!  Many thanks to Mt. Holly Middle school for hosting us and for the food they provided.  Thanks to the instructional technology facilitators for the countless hours they spent preparing for this week.  You all are amazing and your hard work shows!  For a funny review of our week see my twitter!  

Monday, July 20, 2015

Blog Post Day 1 Pinnacle Year 2

Three Things I Found Out:

1.  Personalized Education would be great if I could manage it.
2.  Spreadsheets are confusing!  :-(
3.  SAMR - ask me......I'm quite the expert now!  :-)

Two Interesting Things:
1.  I'm looking forward to working with my group to create our project.
2.  Elisabeth is going to be "low key" this year since she was moved the 4th grade.

One Question I Still Have:
1.  Will we have more time tomorrow to work on our App-mazing Race Project?  (love it)

A Letter to a Parent to Explain SAMR

Dear Parent,
Thank you so much for your concern over your child's education and use of technology.  I do agree that pencil and paper were just fine in past years but I'm sure you want your child to do greater things and learn so much more than you did as a child.

By using SAMR, students are able to do just this!  They can take a basic assignment and truly make it awesome and dive deeper into learning.  Imagine a simple writing assignment in which students create an argumentative essay.  By incorporating SAMR into my lesson plans, the students can take that basic essay and publish in a blog entry where others can express their opinions and the students can argue their opinion.

The SAMR initials stand for:

S - Substitution
A- Augmentation
M- Modification
R- Redefinition



Here's a pretty cool illustration showing where I would ideally like to incorporate SAMR in my classroom.  I want to strive to get my students into the "deep end" of the pool which means that they will be engrossed in technology.