Cody Nevins EDC 370 Mrs.

Thelen 3 January 2014 21 Things Reflection Completing the 21 Things 4 the 21st Century Educator was an interesting experience. I have never been a fan of technology and was excited to complete the things as it was intended to teach me how to implement technology within my future classroom. Unfortunately, this assignment did not meet my goals or my standards of learning technology to implement into my classroom. I did learn a lot, but the implementation factor of the assignment was not there as many of the things were not geared toward using technology to educate my students. As I was completing this assignment, I found myself learning organizational tools such as, Diigo, Dropbox, having a classroom website, Doodle, Lino, etc. These are great resources and tools I have gained interest in and will someday use as an educator, but I am yet to understand how these resources will help me in educating my students.

I learned many great tools that I cannot wait to use as an educator. Although the assignment is not what I had in mind for my expectations, I cannot say I didnt learn anything. My favorite things that I learned from were Thing 12 and Thing 13. With Thing 12 I enjoyed making sample rubrics through Rubistar. Rubistar is definitely a resource I will use often in the future. They had good examples of expectations for children to meet with assignments in all content areas. With Thing 13, I enjoyed learning how to use Quizlet. Quizlet is an awesome resource I will use for myself at times and to suggest for students and parents when studying vocabulary. Other great resources I learned how to use were Google Templates. I found many different templates I will be able to use for lesson plans, assignments, participation, and grading.

I enjoyed using the grading template, because it had formulas implemented into the excel sheet already so grades would generate themselves. When comes time to organize meetings with faculty or other team members for a meeting, I will be eager to use Doodle. I found Doodle to be an awesome resource to use as it not only shows who can meet when, but also shows when the majority of a group can meet. These are only a few of the resources I learned how to use and I cannot wait to put them to use when I become an educator.

One resource that I have always known, but have never learned to use educationally was Google Earth. Google Earth is probably one of the very few resources I learned about and will implement into my future classroom. With Google Earth, I can show my students various locations to make learning more real. This is a resource I could use in a math or social studies lesson. In math, my students could look at locations from certain points and angles and use measurement tools to do real life problems. My students could also look at distance and timing in a math lesson. They can determine how long it takes to get from one point to another by using google maps. In a social studies lesson, I would be able to show my students historical locations or locations that they might not have ever seen. With Google Earth, they would be able to see these places and become more engaged in their learning. My elementary students might even use Google Earth to Travel the World and just explore. They can become familiar with different communities, states, countries, and continents with this resource.

Another resource I would implement into my classroom is Word Cloud. As an educator, I plan to have a bulletin board for a student of the week every week. With this bulletin board they can display whatever they want about themselves. To ensure that each child has at least one item

to display, I will have each student say one thing about the student of the week. With those words, I will help the student of the week make a word cloud. That student, of course, would get to add any words they would like to include, too. The student would get to choose the design, shape, and colors of their word cloud, too! After my student has it displayed on their bulletin board for their week, I will present it to them in a picture frame so they can take it home to display. This is a great way for my entire class to work on complimenting others and using adjectives to describe their classmates. And of course, a word cloud is a confidence booster and it is always importance to build students confidence and self-esteem. As an educator, I find it important to do so through the entire class and not just by me as the teacher.

Learning through 21 Things 4 the 21st Century Educator, I learned a lot of great resource I cannot wait to try out as an educator. My expectations for this assignment were geared towards using technology to educate my students, but I can still say I learned valuable tools and resources. Some of these resources seem to be more work than help and may not be as applicable to my students; so I am interested to see how many things I will be able to use realistically in my future classroom. Unfortunately it is difficult just to fit in all content learning into each day. I will do my best to expose my students to technology along with the required content I must teach my students, too.