POST #1: Introductions and Sharing Your Past Experience

I am currently teaching 2nd grade in NW Iowa.  This will be my fourth year in 2nd grade. Previously I have thought middle school science.  I don't have much experience using the AEA Online services.  I have been very limited in my exposure and knowledge of services available.  The only exception would be BookFlix which I have used in my 2nd grade classroom.  I was interesting in taking this class after looking at a flyer sent home to students about AEA Online and all of its applications available.  I wanted to be able to tap into those and use them within my classroom.  I also wanted to be able to guide students to a more productive way to find information.

I currently work as a Kindergarten classroom teacher in the Johnston School District.  Some of my roles include designing lesson plans, meaningful learning activities, and assessments for my students.  I also have a responsibility, as a contributing member of my team, to make decisions about curriculum, instructional strategies, pacing, and all issues regarding best outcomes for student learning.  

I have limited experience with the Iowa AEA online resources.  I have used BookFlix with my students, but that is where my AEA online experience ends unfortunately.  I have always known the agency's site provides a multitude of resources for teachers, parents, and students.  Due to the limited amount of free time I have as an elementary school teacher, I rarely sat down to explore and understand the various sites and programs within the AEA's website.

During one of my self-selected sessions at our district's most recent Professional Development day, I was introduced to a couple of AEA's online resources.  I love learning to use and implementing new technology in my classroom.  The PD session I mentioned above sparked my interest in AEA's resources and made me want to learn more about what the agency had to offer.  

 

I am the district teacher librarian at Woodward-Granger School District. I finished my library science program in 2010, and this is my first position as a librarian. When we were going through the reference portion of our graduate classes, I found that I didn’t have enough time to become comfortable using the Iowa AEA Online resources - I knew just enough to be dangerous. I took this course as a refresher and feel much more confident in teaching students as well as other staff members how to utilize online resources.

I am going on my 12th year at Southeast Warren Primary Center.  I do K thru 3rd computer lab and also library aide associate

I had no knowledge of Iowa AEA Online resources prior to taking the self paced course.  I did it to renew my para license.  

I was interested in the course since it was self paced.  Summer can get so busy and you want to have fun.  Knowing it was self paced I was very interested as then I could do it as were traveling or when ever I had few free minute or two.  In the past I have had teachers ask me.  If there is somewhere the students could to do some research for some projects.  I never was able to find places that I felt were safe and age appropriate.  This course interest me in hoping to be able to find resources so I can share them with teachers.  

I have been a special education teacher for the past 20 years. I have been at HLV for the majority of those years. The reason that I decided to take this class was that I need to renew my license and realized that I am short credits. I felt like I was fairly knowledgeable about Iowa AEA Online resources and this would be an easy class to get a credit. I am so glad that I took this class. I learned that I knew a lot less about what is available than I thought I knew. I am really looking forward to having my students do projects using the soundzaboud, clip art, and AP resources. We will use those to make our research more interesting to look at. We have a geography project every year, from the gen. ed. teacher, to research a country  and write a report about it. I can't wait to teach the kids how to use CultureGrams to do this research.
Thanks for all the great information.

I have worked as an English teacher for the past nine years.  I started in Winterset as the Composition and AP composition teacher.  Three years ago, I moved to teaching ninth graders.  In each role, I have used the AEA resources, so I thought this class might give me a better understanding of how to take advantage of it.  In each position I have taught students how to do a research paper using the AEA resources including Gale, and SIRs.  Gale is relatively new to me though so I wanted to be able to see if there were things I was not aware of.  We are also currently going through the Iowa Core, and we chose new textbooks to align with it.  This brings me new curriculum and therefore new opportunities to revise my lessons.  I want to incorporate some of the AEA resources into my lessons to best help my students. This includes more presentations for my students and  this class seemed to apply to how students could enhance their presentations without doing so illegally!

I am currently working in an elementary school. We have preschool - 5th grade. My role is a second grade general education teacher. Some of my past experiences with AEA online is that I have used BookFLIX and learn360. To be honest about what interested me was I needed recert. credit. I am really glad that it worked out that way because I was not aware of all the resources that were out there on AEA online. As I was taking the class I was already thinking of different things that I would be able to do in my classroom with the different resources available.

I am currently a substitute teacher. I work for The Des Moines Public Schools. For the past seven years I have been substitute teaching. I do not substitute very often. This year I plan to substitute more often so I have more interaction with students. I like working with all children and I especially like seeing the light bulb moments. I knew AEA existed because some of the people who worked with my son, who was a special education student, worked through AEA. Being a substitute teacher I do not have access to these online media programs. Teachers do not usually leave this information for substitute teachers to use, usually just review items. I wanted to take this course because I could read the information at my own pace. I did not realize that once through the course you could not access that information anymore. Thanks for giving me access to the same information on a different site. Another reason I chose this course was because I did not know what online media resources AEA had to offer. Wow they have lots of resources available for teachers to utilize.

I am getting ready to start my 23rd year teaching Art for the Ankeny Community School District.  My first 3 years was at the elementary level, from then on I have been teaching 6th and 7th graders.  Being in the district this log I have had many opportunities to attend professional development courses.  I have taken some out at heartland itself, but this summer I took my first online class: Moviemaker.  It was a great experience.  Other than that I haven't had much experience.  Some of my exposure of what heartland has to offer has come from some of the training our media specialists have given us.....I had no idea there was this much information I could be using.

Hello, my name is Jason August.  I am a substitute teacher for a larger school district and some of the smaller surrounding school districts.  I substitute at the middle and high school level an average of three to four days a week.  The other days of the week I stay home with our active three year old while transporting our six year old to school and activities.  My wife also works for the school district where we reside as an Instructional Coach.  Previously before substitute teaching and staying home a couple days, I worked for our local school district through a grant position.  

I have had experience with AEA online when working for the school district by renewing copyright, bloodborne passages, and those type of yearly requirements.  I heard my wife and other teachers references the AEA online resources to use in the classroom, but had very little experience with this myself.  I became interested in this course as a subsitute teaching authorization renewal to further my knowledge around AEA online resources.  

I am a Substitute Teacher in Boone/Ames, having also worked in Madrid and Ogden in the last three years.  I was in the financial world prior to returning to Iowa State to pursue a Masters of Ed with a Math specialty.  This is my first experience with AEA online.  I didn't realize I needed to take continuing ed courses to maintain my Sub license so I was happy to find a few online AEA course to satisfy this requirement.  I took this course to learn about the options available to educators to enrich the classroom.  As a Sub there is often 'dead' time.  I often use TED talks to fill time, but I was curious about what other options were available.  It was great to find out how many different resources AEA provides to teachers to help them keep students engaged.

In the last 6 years I have head the title of a Para Educator/ Library Associate.  I have always known about the AEA Online resources but just never personally with the resources.  Last year we hired a new part time Librarian who has been introducing me with more with what the AEA has to offer.  She suggested I take this class and I can say that I have enjoyed it and have learned much more than I thought I would.  
In library class, we strive to make reading fun and enjoyable to student.  Bookflix is something we have used and will continue to use.  Most of our student’s just love being able to listen to a book while watching a video.  I am looking forward to this year and being able to assist the librarian on making lesion plans and using more of the online resources.  

I am a Developmental Kindergarten teacher at Ankeny Christian Academy starting my third year at this school.  My role is to instruct kindergarten aged children at a slower classroom pace then the "normal" kindergarten pace while working on social skills, emotional skills, and fine motor skills. I have taught at other schools in two different states before coming to back to Iowa.  2. I have not had much experience with the AEA online resources before taking this class.  I was introduced to the resources my first year of teaching at Ankeny Christian Academy, but did not fully look into them at that time.  3. I was interested in taking this course so I could find more resources that are available to me instead of always going to the library.  Also, I wanted to be refreshed on the resources that AEA offered to teachers so I can use them in the classroom this coming school year.  The AEA online resources will be very useful in the upcoming school year especially the sites that offer information on the states.

1.  I have been teaching Math and coaching in the Fairfield School District for the past 7 years (going into my 8th).  I currently teach grades 9-12 in Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, and Geometry.  I have had the opportunity in the last few years to work with a co-teacher in a few sections and we would discuss how we could better incorporate online resources into our lesson plans in order to reach different learning types.

2.  I have very little experience with the AEA online resources, but have been able to use resources from other sites for instruction and review purposes.

3.  First and foremost, this seemed to be a very beneficial way to earn a renewal credit.  I enjoy learning about new ways to instruct and create a learner based environment in the classroom.  I feel much more knowledgeable about the resources that we have at our disposal and also think this will enable me to be a more diverse teacher in the future.

I currently work at Waverly-Shellrock as a Title I instructor.  W-SR currently has three Title I/ Remedial Reading teachers in our district.  I am blessed to work with a great team of teachers.  I taught First grade in Lubbock, Texas where we did not have an AEA.  I was excited to have AEA when I returned to Iowa to have the support of the AEA.  I used the AEA for laminating and for personal for my students.  As a Title teacher I don't feel that I use the AEA resources enough that they provide.  I don't feel that we are in-serviced about what is available.   With school budgets so tight and technology more available I felt that this would be a great class to take to show me what is out there and how to access the materials that would benefit my classroom.  I have to also blame myself because some of the features that were addressed in the self-paced course have been brought to my attention but I had forgotten about them. ( Truflix and Bookflix)  With more chrome books and iPads available to my room I feel that I will be able to use many of these resources in my classroom.

I currently teach fourth grade in Ottumwa, Iowa. In the past I have used Learn360,  Trueflix, and Bookflix.  I decided to take this class because I knew there were a lot of resources available on AEA online that I was not sure how to use.  I am happy to say I learned a lot about the site.  I can see my students using AEA online in multiple ways.

I currently am employed at MFL MarMac School District as the Drop out Prevention Coordinator.  This is the first year this position has been offered to the district.  Last year I was employed as a Special Education Associate in the high school.  I have a background in Social Work with an emphasis of working in school settings.  I also have my substitute teaching authorization and was thrilled to see that we were able to obtain credit through the online courses offered through AEA.  That is what enticed me to enroll in this class. I was only familiar with the AEA online mandatory classes which I have taken in the past.  The self-paced courses were something I had been searching for to keep my substitute authorization.  I have a busy schedule outside of work with four actively involved children, volunteer coaching and religious education teacher. Being able to work on this course at my own pace has been a great gift. I will be able to use this course to not only assist students with projects at school but also with my own children as well.

I currently am employed as Associate Librarian for St Edmond Catholic Schools.  That covers PreS through 12th grades.  Primarily my focus is on library classes for the lower grades but supervise and assist with upper grades as well.  

Previous experience with AEA was through Heartland and of course any annual classes that are required with education (mandatory reporting, hazardous chemicals, bloodborne pathegens, etc).  This probably would be my first self-paced class that is at this level on interaction.

My interest in this particular subject was my need for licensure and Digital Citizenship as well as AEA resources.  These items are dealt with daily in my position

I have been a substitute teacher for only 4 years. The first 2 years for a Missouri schools that only require you have a 4 year degree in anything. The next 2 years i worked for a local school with my substitute authorization. I obtained the authorization so I could sub locally rather than travel across the boarder to sub. I work more for the local school then the Missouri school now. I sometimes sub for my grandchildren's classroom. This is a very rewarding experience, not to mention the training I obtained to acquire my substitute authorization and has proved to be invaluable. I also enjoy the relationships with the young people I have gained by subbing locally. This all makes me wish I had chosen the teaching profession for my career. I am really semi-retired with some extreme health issues that limit the number of hours I can work. Substitute teaching is a great way to continue to be useful during my semi-retirement.
Although I have no experience with the AEA self paced online classes, I obtained an MBA part online and part classroom experience. In comparison the AEA online classes are very well done in my opinion, so will continue to be a positive way for me to get the require CEUs needed to renew my substitute authorization.
This course appeared to be one that would give me invaluable information that I may use as a teacher to assist any regular teacher in their role in helping the students learn rather than just following a lesson plan that is a typical sub lesson pan. With this material or resources I will be able to find teaching aids that will add to the knowledge base of the students, and help them retain that knowledge. I want to do more than just baby-sit in the classroom. A Substitute teachers role is much more then that

I work as a substitute teacher in the elementary school.  I do enjoy being with the kids and seeing what is being done with and for them. We are a two town school so sometimes I drive the nearly 1/2 hour to be at the other half of the school or to spend time in the special ed room at the middle school or the elementary classes there. Our highest grade level is 4 in the school I spend the most time in.  Middle school is in the other town and the high school is back here again.  
My husband spent 27 years in the USAF so we moved every other June during that time.  I did teach second grade before we began this journey and was able to teach a 1-2 grade combination class during one post.
Most of the time I substituted rather than try to accomplish each state requirement for certification.  I guess you could say I have been a professional substitute teacher and have done so in many different states.
I'm sure you can surmise that I am not a young person any more.  For this reason I wanted to take this course for my own benefit as well as to possibly help at school.  The content is a real eye opener for me.  I think it will be useful to me personally as well as to renew my certificate. I really need the self paced course to fit in around our busy schedule and to finish in time to be of use to the school.