Something Learned

As I began the new teaching year, I’m struck by how many things I learned during my fellowship. I knew I would learn a lot during my externship that would impact my teaching, but I had no idea how many new ideas and tools I would gain during the professional development sessions at NCAAT and in Raleigh. My plan is to test out at least three new ideas this year.

So far, I have used Google forms more effectively to collect and analyze a get to know you survey completed by my students and their parents. Having an electronic copy of this information has been so helpful to look at trends in my classes as a whole. I also love that I can access this information anywhere, so if I’m at home working on a lesson, I can quickly refer back to it without having to search through files at school.

I was already familiar with Socrative, but I’m hoping to use Go Soapbox this year. I love all the additional features it offers, and I think it will be a great way to teach content interactively.

The third thing I really want to try is using Evernote to keep track of my teacher evaluation documentation. I used Evernote while completing my National Boards portfolio a couple years ago, but had never thought of using it to help with the teacher evaluation instrument. I’m excited to send my evaluator an electronic copy (video, pictures, artifacts) of the awesome things my students are doing rather than hauling a binder down to his office at the end of the year.

I also have been sharing these things (and others) with my colleagues like crazy! I can’t wait to see our students’ growth throughout the year.