Category: - Angela Burgess - Electronic Portfolio

Commençons the changes

5/19/2014

Good afternoon. I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself. Some of you may know me, but there have been some major changes in my life recently, so I'll start anew.

My name is Angela Burgess. I obtained my Associate of Arts degree from Young Harris College in 1997 and my Bachelor of Science in Foreign Language Education from the University of Georgia on May 13, 2000. Fourteen years later, to the day, I obtained my Masters of Education in Instructional Technology from Kennesaw State University. Currently, I am a French teacher and assistant Instructional Technology Specialist (ITS) at Lambert High School. In the past, I have also taught 10th Grade Literature and Composition, as well as serving as a Creative Director for the Lambert Dance Company (LDC).

Do you know the word used to describe graduation ceremonies? "Commencement" comes from the French verb commencer, which means "to begin." This is because graduation marks not just the end of a set period of studies and educational endeavors, but also the beginning of a new path in the graduate's life. Just as my current seniors are about to take the fork in the road that leads to college, the military, or a career, I am also preparing for the next twist in my path.

In my case, that path leads out of the classroom and into an office. Beginning next year, I will be the full-time ITS at my school. While I will still work with my same colleagues, it will not be the same. My interaction with students will be limited to my work with LDC and to those times when teachers ask me to assist them with technology in their classroom. I have not had a day in my life since I was 8 years old where I did not speak, read, write, or listen to French in some way. I don't know what a monolingual life looks like. I am hoping to keep my French muscles flexed by tutoring and perhaps teaching online, but I am scared at the prospect of letting go of my life's work up to this point.

At the same time, I am excited by the prospect of new challenges and new responsibilities. I am nervous about not living up to the expectations of my co-workers, about letting them down, and about all of the things that I do not yet know to be nervous about. I worry about losing touch with my life as a classroom teacher and the stresses that daily classroom life brings. I try to tell myself that I will enjoy not bringing home papers to grade, but then find myself bringing home ITS work home, so maybe that part of my life will not change.

There will be changes at this blog as well. Now that I have graduated, posts here will be few and far between. If you are interested in continuing to follow my new path, send me a message and I'll be happy to share other ways to follow me. To anyone reading this, I wish you the best of luck as you continue your path.

Bonne chance à toutes et à tous!

Reflections and resolutions

1/1/2014

As I am about to begin my last semester of the Instructional Technology Master's program at KSU, I find myself reflecting on the semester that has ended and making resolutions for the year to come.

This semester, I again took two classes. The class for the Instructional Technology MEd program was ITEC 7305, Data Analysis and School Improvement. I began the semester by thinking that the class content would be very dry, difficult to understand, and somewhat unengaging. I continued this train of thought up until we began work on our larger projects, where the lightbulb finally came on and everything that we had studied clicked and came together for me. In this class, we learned many ways of using Excel that had escaped my grasp previously. For someone who is not "a math person," I am continuously amazed at all the ways that I use Excel as part of my daily responsibilities and by how excited I am to learn new ways to use it. I think that the Data Overview was most valuable project completed because of the timeliness of our need as a school for data to support our grant study. Over the next year, I hope to continue applying this learning in my school by working closely with the administration and the ELA and Math departments as we collect and analyze the data needed to meet the goals of our i3 grant.

The other class that I took this semester was for my Leadership Endorsement, EDL 7500, Education Leadership and Ethics. This was another course that I initially approached with great trepidation. We were asked to "think like lawyers" and my first response was, "Wait! But I'm not a lawyer and I never wanted to be one! How can I possibly think like one?!" However, the course ended up being was of the best courses that I've taken throughout the entire program. While the information presented was challenging and the application of law, as well as all of the exceptions, were sometimes difficult to follow, the course was intellectually stimulating and caused me to evaluate all of my actions, as well as the actions of those around me throughout the entire semester. In fact, despite my initial misgivings, I enjoyed the course so much that I am considering options for the future that would enable me to take other similar courses. I just need to discover what degree track they would follow.

Now that our new semester is about to begin, I also have begun to make resolutions for the upcoming year, as one does,

I will not fall behind this semester. This is my last semester and I will not only finish on time, but feeling good about the effort put forth throughout the entire semester.
I will apply my learning on a daily basis. As I begin the culmination of my master's program, I will work to apply something that I learned through the program to my daily job activities,
I will relish my free time. When the program is complete, I will spend my newly-free time with my family and friends to make up for the time that I have missed with them over the past two years (instead of "wasting it" on TV shows, movies, books, and Pinterest).
I will continue to be a lifelong learner, even when not in school. We can always learn new things. I will continue learning from my PLN on Twitter and Pinterest and will attempt to try new things in my responsibilities, even when the program is complete.

What are your resolutions, goals, or aspirations for this year? Share below in the comments! Happy New Year!

Reflecting on Research and Leadership

8/25/2013

As I begin my second to last semester in the ITEC program, I find myself in something resembling the movie Groundhog Day. Last semester (Summer 2013), I took my first classes that had little to do with technology. One of those classes was ITEC 7470, Educational Research. The image to the left quite accurately reflects my feelings for most of the course. While the course itself was very straightforward, and I was able to focus my final project (a review of current research and literature) on educational technology, the readings were far outside my comfort zone.

What I found through this course was that I am definitely more of a language person than a scientific or mathematical person. I was genuinely interested in the qualitative research reports that we studied or that I found in conducting my literature review. On the other hand, the quantitative research was so far outside of my normal range of reading that I found myself reading them three or four times and still being confused. I do see the value in numbers and statistics in research, and so found myself struggling with how to easily combine these two methods. Luckily, towards the end of the course, I found the solution when we began learning about mixed methods research. While I am nowhere near to being comfortable enough to conduct my own large-scale research, I believe that as educators, we are all researchers on a small scale in our classroom. We constantly experiment with new ways of presenting information, creating interactions, and assessing learning while then reviewing the numbers that we receive from those experiments.

The other course that I took was EDL 7100, Leadership Theory and Practice. One of the most challenging things about this course was trying to put myself into the mindset of a school leader. I have always seen myself as "just" a teacher, with very little leadership ability. This is good, because I have also never seen myself moving into administration, preferring instead to stay in the classroom and to teach students, not to lead teachers. However, as the course progressed, I began to realize that I am a leader already, in my classroom, in my department, and in my school. In my classroom, I act as a leader by inspiring and encouraging my students, by helping them to learn information and skills that will benefit them when they leave my classroom, and by expanding their spectrum of knowledge beyond the walls and borders of our classroom. In my department, I lead by assisting other teachers when they struggle (just as they assist me), by sharing current legislation or discussions that may affect our content area, and by promoting a cycle of constant inquiry into best practices for education. In my school, I am able to serve as a teacher-leader through the things that I do as a classroom teacher. The ultimate lesson that I learned through this course was that leaders are not confined to department chairs or administrators. All educators have the potential and ability to become leaders - they just have to do it.

Final reflections on ITEC 7430

4/30/2013

WOW!
This semester seems to have flown by, and been jam-packed!  Sometimes I’m not sure how I’ve actually made it through without letting something completely fall and crash.  While there have certainly been some slips, I have somehow managed to catch them all and get them where they belong.

At the beginning of the semester, terms like RSS-feeds, Delicious, blogs, and screencasting were all academic vocabulary to me or part of my personal social-media life, rather than part of my professional toolbox. Over the course of the semester, however, I have now integrated RSS-feeds and blogs into both my personal and professional life.  Additionally, I have incorporated VoiceThread into all three of my content areas in what I believe to be effective and engaging way.

One problem that I currently have, however, is that students often resist my attempts to flip my classroom using notes delivered via VoiceThread or Prezi, or to create a communicative writing experience using blogs. It is my intention to incorporate these elements from the beginning of my classes in the fall. If these become part of the course requirements from the beginning, students will hopefully be more accepting. Additionally, as I gain experience and as students learn more about using technology to increase their own learning and engagement, they will also learn more about themselves and what they need to become successful.

Increasing cultural understanding and global awareness

4/17/2013

Thirty years ago, students were limited to interactions with the other students in their classroom or school. For some schools, such as in my system, Forsyth County, this meant that those students were not exposed to a very diverse population. As a result, they had a limited understanding of diverse cultures. Today, the advances and integration of technology into even the most remote areas has increased both understanding and respect for diversity. The authors of Fostering Students’ Global Awareness: Technology Applications in Social Studies Teaching and Learning promote the idea that “through infusion of both global education and technology...teachers can foster students’ understandings of the interrelationships of peoples worldwide, thereby preparing students to participate meaningfully as global citizens (Crawford & Kirby, 2008).” Indeed, while the article is specific to social studies classrooms, I would argue that exposure to different cultures should be part of all classrooms and subject areas. As the business world continues to become more globally connected, an education about and exposure to diversity is essential for all students.

Crawford and Kirby continue by referencing David Thornburg’s 2002 assertion that “the most essential skills for becoming a future ‘knowledge-value’ worker are technological fluency, effective communication skills, teamwork, leadership, problem solving, and creativity (2008).” In order to give our students the most exposure to the skills, they must communicate with others outside of their own community, learning the value of other cultures and perspectives. Unfortunately, the ability of a teacher to take his or her students on culturally-rich and diverse learning experiences outside of the classroom is severely limited by the shrinking budgets that schools face. Again though, technology comes in to assist. David Houston wrote in his 2003 article “Can the Internet Promote Open Global Societies?” that “the Internet’s power as a communication tool comes in part from its capacity to disrupt the status quo by bring new knowledge at a very low cost to the far reaches of the globe.”   With the cost associated with such exposure brought to manageable levels, or even eliminated, the playing field can be leveled, the digital divide can shrink, and students from all classifications can share and exchange their ideas. With the exchange of ideas comes communication, collaboration, and reflection.

Far from using the Internet “just for the sake of using it (Greene, 2012)”, Stephen Greene uses technology to open his students’ minds to stereotypes and then to eliminate them with knowledge. For example, he uses videos from YouTube and other video hosting sites to expose his ESL students to authentic language, accents, and viewpoints from English-speakers around the globe. He asks students to look at trending topics on Twitter and then to discover the meaning of the hashtag. He asks students to present their stereotypes of regions and then to research to find evidence that either confirms or refutes the stereotypes. Activities such as these are perfect for a language class, but would fit in well with any subject matter.

Another way to increase student collaboration and communication for the purpose of increasing cultural understanding and global awareness is to encourage blogging in the classroom. Hosting an open blog with two-way communication between students at two schools in different parts of the world can double the global awareness benefits, and can even lead to global action. As Crawford and Kirby argue, “By connecting classrooms worldwide, students can participate in global service learning projects (2008)” that can lead to not only the above mentioned benefits, but also the traditional classroom benefits of more engagement, higher achievement, and deeper reflection.

RESOURCES

Crawford, E.O., & Kirby, M.M. (n.d.). Fostering students’ global awareness: Technology applications in social studies teaching and learning. (2008). Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 2(1), 56-   73. doi: 10.3776/joci.2008.v2n1p56-73

Greene, S. (2012, April11). Using technology to raise cultural awareness. Retrieved from             http://www.tmenglish.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127:using-technology-to-raise-cultural-awareness&catid=12&Itemid=134

Houston, D.A. (n.d.). Can the internet promote open global societies?. (2003). The Independent, VII(3), 354-370. Retrieved from http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_3_houston.pdf

Keeping students safe in the classroom

4/10/2013

Things have changed since we were students in the classroom. For many of us, things have changed A LOT. The biggest change concerns student privacy and safety. That is all thanks to the creation of the internet and advent of wireless technologies.

As Will Richardson states in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, student safety is about far more than simply not publishing full names and pictures. Instead, “safety is now about responsibility, appropriateness, and common sense as well (Ch. 1, “Keeping Students Safe”, paragraph 1).” Richardson relates an incident that occurred in his classroom where a student accidentally chanced upon an inappropriate site. However, due to the time spent in class teaching students that “responsible” means more than avoiding irresponsible sites, but also reacting in an appropriate manner when coming across inappropriate sites, the situation was a teaching moment, not the “phone call to the office” that it could have been.

Among the many “common sense” things that have fallen to teachers to teach is the appropriate and responsible use of the internet by students. During my research of sites available, the following useful conseils appeared:

“Every piece of information you post, and every action you take online has commercial value to someone (Washington State Office of the Attorney General, 2008).”
Most people think about the “private” information that they may or may not reveal. But it’s important to remember that anything posted by or about someone can help to reveal that person’s identity. If privacy is important, students need to be sure that they take that into consideration before posting. Also, they need to know to let their friends know what is and what is not okay to say about them.
“Cyber bullying refers to cruel or bullying messages sent to you online. These might be from former friends or other people you know (Dowshen).”
The general idea of “cyber bullying” is threatening messages. However, it is important to know that any mean or bullying messages sent online is considered cyber bullying. If it happens, students need to know that it is not okay and how to go about reporting it.
“Teens may not realize that what they post sets their reputation. Other people might judge them based on their profiles. It’s not just inappropriate photos that put them at risk. Teens might also post references to underage drinking and engage in mean-spirited chat. As kids get older, stuff they’ve posted in the past can reappear. According to a 2008 Kaplan survey, 10% of college admissions officers at the nation’s top 500 colleges looked at applicants’ social networking profiles. 38% of them said that what they saw “negatively affected” their opinion of the applicant (Common Sense Media, 2012).”
I don’t actually have anything to add here. They say it all, and say it pretty clearly.

RESOURCES

Common Sense Media. (2012, March 19). Internet safety tips for high school kids. Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/advice-for-parents/internet-safety-tips-high-school-kids

Dowshen, S. (2011). Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/teen/safety/safebasics/internet_safety.html

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. (3rd ed.). Corwin Press.

Washington State Office of the Attorney General. (2008). Internet safety - teens. Retrieved from http://www.atg.wa.gov/InternetSafety/Teens.aspx

Edmodo and Classroom 2.0

3/31/2013

My school system has had an LMS for almost as long as I can remember. We began with Blackboard, but its use was neither clearly explained nor heavily encouraged. However, about 7 years ago, we switched to a new LMS called Angel. At that point, the view and focus of the system changed. There were numerous training sessions on how to use Angel with our classes. These sessions were held throughout the school year and offered multiple times, so that there was no excuse to not attend. Additionally, the county leaders shifted their motivation. Instead of telling teachers, “Here is a tool that you can use if you choose and if you are able to figure out how to use it,” we were told, “Here is our new LMS. It is called Angel. Here are the trainings you will attend and these are the dates by which you must meet the following implementation steps with each of your classes.”

Keeping this in mind, I have not experimented with many other online LMS tools. Because we are expected to use Angel for all of our classes, I had not even tried Edmodo prior to now, despite the system having set up accounts for all teachers to use with their classes. I believe strongly in streamlining information and processes, not duplicating them in multiple places.

Once I did experiment some with Edmodo and Classroom 2.0, I found that I had very differing opinions. I can see why students would be more attracted to Edmodo. Its landing page, so clearly based on that of Facebook, is engaging and streamlined. I appreciate being able to see all of my news and events on one page, in an easy to read format. Classroom 2.0, on the other hand, appeared to be too “busy” for my liking, with too much print in too small of a fon

Several years ago, Angel was purchased by Blackboard. They agreed to maintain the program for a limited number of years, at which point support would end. That time has come, and next year, we will transition to yet another LMS. This time, my system has chosen itsLearning, with access beginning for those of us in the pilot program next week. Having become quite proficient with Angel while still recognizing its weaknesses, I have high expectations. Having now experienced what other LMSs can do, such as Edmodo, those have been raised even higher. As I begin learning more about the system, I will share my findings.

Podcasts for the Terminally Busy

3/17/2013

Once you have a child, your days of being able to do almost anything without interruption are over. These interruptions can be welcome distractions for many of the things that we do as educators (and students). Grading a stack of essays in poorly written French (or worse, poorly written English)? A child who needs help putting clothes away can be a blessing in disguise. Researching the latest trends in technology for the classroom? A well-deserved break is hidden in the request for assistance unloading the dishwasher. While the interrupting child is no longer detrimental to TV watching (when one finds the time) thanks to the DVR, he can still wreak havoc on the morning commute as one tries to listen to NPR, or to the Bert Show.

Luckily for me, I discovered a solution to this problem in the form of podcasts almost a decade ago. I began with podcasts about my favorite subjects: travel and Harry Potter. I subscribed to “Travel with Rick Steves” and “Pottercast” at first, and quickly began growing my list of podcasts. Over the years, I have also subscribed to podcasts about the French language, about history (check out “Stuff You Missed in History Class”), about world events (I have too many favorite NPR podcasts to list them all), and about running.

I have used some of these podcasts in my classroom as an additional resource for my students. Learning about the French Revolution can be boring when reading about in French in a textbook, but can become more interesting and comprehensible when listening to two people talk about it while you walk the dog or drive home from school. In the same way, a poem assigned for memorization can become easier to memorize if there is an accompanying podcast that focuses on meaning and pronunciation. I have even asked students to create their own podcasts with the assistance of our digital language lab to model the style used in a podcast called “One Thing in a French Day” that we called “One Thing in an IB Day.”

Reflecting on these now makes me realize that I should perhaps bring some of these tools back again. All of my students could benefit from greater experience with presentational speaking, whether in French or in English. Additionally, because proper preparation for presentational speaking also includes presentational writing, students would gain practice with those skills as well.

Social bookmarking

2/26/2013

I have to say that this week’s lesson has been one of love and hate. Well, maybe not “hate,” but frustration and dislike. I will begin with the dislike so that I can end on a positive by talking about what I really liked.

Therefore, to commence, I am not a fan of Delicious. While I love the idea of it (see my feed here), I find that I do not like it in practice. I resisted the idea when it first came out, so perhaps it is just me being stubborn. However, as I use my Google bookmarks button on every computer that I use, I find that not being able to easily import those bookmarks that I have been collecting for my entire teaching career is frustrating. Through a quick Google search, it appears as though the site previously had a way to do that, but the feature has been disabled. Now, the only bookmarks that can be imported are those sites sent out via Twitter or Facebook. I do like the idea of being able to search through the sites that I tweet, but it seems to me that I could just as easily do so by searching my Twitter history.

So what do I use instead? As mentioned previously, I use Google Bookmarks almost exclusively. With any new computer that is mine to alter, I download the Google Toolbar so that I can have my bookmarks. When I first received my new laptop for Christmas and began using Chrome for this program, I was devastated to find out that while I could add bookmarks in the browser, I could not access them via the same button. Since then, I realized that I could simply add a bookmark to the bookmark bar and visit the web version of all of my bookmarks. I know that this is simply my collection, and not social. However, since I find many of my resources already via Twitter, I am still social, if my bookmarks are not.

On the other hand, I also use Pinterest as a form of visual social bookmarking (you can see my school “pins” here). I have boards for everything I enjoy, from personal to professional to social. As I collect more pins, I have found the need to separate them into sub-categories. Pinterest could improve by following in the footsteps of Google or Delicious in this area. I follow fellow teachers, EdTech bloggers, EdTech companies, and “gurus.” All of these people share sites they find interesting and informative. I share them in turn when I pin them. I am also able to see what else has been pinned by similar pinners or onto similar boards. To me, this is the definition of social bookmarking, even if not the recommended tool.

Lastly, to end on a positive, while not strictly part of the blogging assignment for this week, I did really enjoy finding new leaders in education and educational technology to follow on Twitter (see my profile page here). Because they were not mentioned, I will share some of favorite Tweeters here as well:

@langology: Language news and language education
@joedale: Independent MFL and technology consultant
@msjweir: a high school English teacher and self-proclaimed technology “geek”
@WeAreTeachers: an online community of teachers of all subjects and levels
@21stCenturyTch: devoted to education in the 21st Century

Who are your favorite Tweeps?

Feeding our needs, fueling our feeds (Or, finding useful RSS feeds)

2/1/2013

This semester, we have been asked to set up Google Reader accounts and follow a variety of different feeds. For years now, I have seen the little orange “RSS Feed” icon and yet never known what it is or what to do with it. However, over the past few weeks, I have begun seeing its use more and more as a quicker way to stay abreast of current trends and information.

Today, I would like to share a video course that I found via the roundabout way that the Internet typically works. One of the feeds to which I subscribed is Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne. In a recent post, Mr. Byrne introduced A New Crash Course in U.S. History, a new video series by John Green of VlogBrothers fame and author of The Fault in our Stars and An Abundance of Katherines. I was intrigued. I have a passing familiarity with John Green due to his association with all things Harry Potter, and knew that he has a large Internet presence. This educational aspect of his work was new to me, and while I am not a history teacher, I occasionally bring history into my classroom as a way of setting up the context in which a literary work takes place. Consequently, I went to the U.S. History Crash Course site on YouTube, watched the first (and so far, only) video with my 5th grade son, and knew that this was a potentially great resource.

After the video was over, it then showed related videos. Lo and behold, John Green also has a Crash Course on English Literature! The short introduction video is something that I wish that I had had when the year first started. Watching it led me to other gems to use in my classroom, like a video about the French Revolution (perfect for French 4) and another about the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar (perfect for my upcoming 10th Grade Literature and Composition unit in which we read William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar). As I said, I watched the first video with my son, who loved it so much that he is now pleading with me to finish so that we can watch another. If my students like it even half as much as he does, then I will feel that I have accomplished my goal of increasing their engagement in the class.

If I had not already been convinced that my RSS feed would prove to be beneficial, last night’s perusing proved the point. While I won’t talk about them all here tonight, here are some other tidbits that I found intriguing:

What about you? Tell me your favorite finds in the comments.

Author

Angela Burgess is a high school French and Lit teacher, as well as an Instructional Technology Specialist. She is also understandably a Francophile and technophile. She obtained her M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Kennesaw State University in May 2014.

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