POST #1: Introductions and Sharing Your Past Experience

I am a special education teacher of students with significant disabilities. The students I work with are 19-21 years old. Reading levels are emergent (unable to recognize letters, etc.) to middle elementary level. I teach English language literacy to two groups of students, one being emergent and one being distal/proximal using the Iowa Core Essential Elements. I have used Bookflix on the AEA website, but have not used many other materials. My hope is to find materials that are more age appropriate for my students.

I am a special education teacher at a special school in Des Moines. I work with students with significant disabilities, who are 19-21 years old. I teacher English Language Arts (Reading and Writing) to two groups of students. We use the Iowa Core Essential Elements. One of my groups are students with emergent language skills. They are unable to read, understand letters/words, etc. Most has significant speech needs and are unable to communication in a traditional way. My other group is at the distal/proximal level, being able to read at the PK-3rd grade level. Many also have significate communication needs as well.

I use Bookflix quite a lot. I have not used many other resources on the AEA website.

I took this course to find materials that are more age appropriate for my students.

I currently work at F.L. Smart Intermediate School in Davenport, Iowa.  I am a Strat I and Strat II teacher working exclusively with learning disability and behavioral disability students.  I see students in grades 6-8.  

I have had plenty of experiences with my students in utilizing the resources of with the AEA online.  I do a lot of interaction with the Learn 360, and it seems to be something that is very effective in collaborating with my teaching.

I wanted to take this course to increase my awareness of all the different materials that you provide.  There are times when I am struggling to find age appropriate materials and further educating myself on what other options that you provide will be very beneficial to my students.  I also had a colleague that took this class prior and she had nothing but great things to say about the course and how it helped her in her daily teachings.

Currently I am overseeing the 4 libraries in our district.  I am working on an extremely part time basis.  I am also substitute teaching at our elementary schools.  I retired a several years ago after working for our school district for 33 years, most of that time as the full time media specialist for our 2 elementary school libraries.

As the media specialist in our building before I retired, I had the opportunity to use AEA online when it was first introduced to our district.  I worked with the students so they could get online and use the resources at home.

When I was informed that Iowa AEA Online Resources had greatly expanded over the years,  I thought that it would be beneficial for me to see the new products, as well as their new capabilities.  I will be able share the new information with the staff that are curious about what is out there.

I am currently working at St. Joseph Elementary School in DeWitt, Iowa. I teach ELA to my homeroom of 4th grade students, and I also teach reading to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students. We have one section of each grade level.
When I taught self-contained 4th grade, I used two of the Iowa aea online resources-Britannica and CultureGrams. I guided the students in using these resources during research lessons for our Social Studies curriculum.
Now, as an ELA and reading teacher, I use a lot of different fiction and nonfiction books for instruction. Our 3-4-5 grade band teachers work closely together. As the Social Studies teacher develops units for 3rd-4th- and 5th grade students that align with Iowa Core, I want my reading class books to provide background knowledge and increase vocabulary for those Social Studies units that my colleague is teaching. I also want to provide support during reading class for the ELA standards being taught in the three grades. After a conversation with our middle school reading/ELA teacher about looking for resources to help me, she stated that this course might be helpful.
I am very glad I took this course. Iowa aea online resources will provide so much more that I thought. I look forward to exploring them!

For the past 12 years, I have worked at the Pella Community High School Library. I spent the first two years as the library associate after that I was hired on as the HS teacher librarian. After two years at the high school only, my role expanded to include the middle school. Before beginning the class, I had used some of the resources with my students and staff, mainly CultureGrams, Gale, and SIRS. Over years, I had given presentations to various classes such as the 7th graders for their country study project, argumentative essay assignments and other research projects and/or papers such the research project in Advanced Writing. I took the class so I would be able to enhance my knowledge of some of the lower level resources and learn more about some of the databases I already use with students. I also wanted to see if this class would be a good fit for my library associates to take as an opportunity for professional development.

I have been teaching elementary physical education for 27 years. I love my career and I am passionate about learning new ways of teaching and inspiring young students. I have used i-clipart a lot! I love being able to use pictures when making various news items for parents. I have used clipart for our bike rodeo, games day, track day, online newsletters, my after-school Booster Club teacher manual, and now for stay at home p.e. weekly newsletters! I know there is a lot more available for teachers and students and I thought this would be a fantastic way to learn. Our principal also asked us to look at Using Iowa AEA Online Resources during a HOME Professional Development day last week. With that being said, and having to quarantine, I was looking for professional opportunities to learn and gain credit to keep me busy during this time at home.  

My name is Lisa Havlicek and I currently work for the Linn Mar District at Indian Creek Elementary School in Marion, Iowa. I have taught Art at this position for 20 years now.  I have enjoyed taking Iowa AEA Online courses as they are convenient and I learn a lot from them. I like the online courses as we can do them on our own time and they are self-paced.  I learned about the AEA Online Resources course through a professional development day at our district. Many coworkers commented about all of the enriching resources that were available that they did not know about until after taking this course.  It sounded interesting and I thought it would help inform me of some of the current online resources as I have not taken a class like this in a while. I am looking forward to learning about resources I can use to help teach art and art history to elementary age students at my school.

I have always taught pre-K and have been a Head Start teacher for the past 18 years.  I have not had any experience with the AEA online resources prior to this class.  It wasn't until about four years ago that we were allowed to use the internet within the classroom. Once we were allowed to have access to the internet with our ipads, the go-to has usually been to use Youtube.  We have used it for supplemental resources such as read-alouds, songs, animal or other science videos, etc.  I chose this course, because I need to become  more familiar with what quality resources are available. It sounded like just what I needed to become more savvy and to have fun exploring these new (to me) and educational resources. I am excited to become more familiar with time and practice and learn the best resources to supplement the curriculum and childrens' interests.

1) I am and have been working as a personal banker for two years.  My primary job is opening and maintaining consumer and small business accounts as well as handling consumer loans.  The Iowa AEA resources are not applicable to my current job.  However, I still have a desire to return to the classroom if it becomes a better fit for my personal life at some point in the future.  
2) As part of my graduate degree I had the opportunity to explore the Heartland AEA in person.  The tour explained a lot of their online resources as well.  I did not utilize the online resources nearly as much as I could have.  Part of the issue was being a new and overwhelmed teacher, part was a lack of computer and internet access for the students and a final part was just not being familiar with the resources.
3) I was interested in this course because if I have the opportunity to return to the classroom, I think the AEA has a lot of resources that I could use to make my life easier and improve my students’ learning without reinventing the wheel.

I have taught kindergarten in Iowa City for the past 15 years.  A lot has changed since I have been there, especially technology.  I am not afraid to say .... TECHNOLOGY HATES ME.   However, since the whole COVID thing, I have been thrust into using more and more on a daily basis.  
I actually knew that the AEA has things for educators to use BUT I had NO idea how BIG the assortment actually is.   I was floored.   So many great options for every level, but especially things I can use in MY classroom.  (Usually that's hard to come by in many instances without having to fiddle with it to make it understandable for my kiddos)
As I read through the material on copyright, I realized I've been doing things wrong for a LONG time.
oops.  
Since things are so up  in the air about school in the fall, its great to see what is available to me, and plan on bringing into the classroom, whether on the "smartboard" in the classroom or on video for out of school plans.  I am kind of excited to try it all out, and then be able to show my younger more techy co-teachers what I have learned!

I currently teach Kindergarten in a small private school in Cedar Rapids. I have known about the resources available on Iowa AEA Online since I began teaching but I have yet to take full advantage of them. This class has allowed me to have a better understanding of the resources and gain ideas of how they could be used in the classroom. I initially signed up for the class because I needed re-certification credit but I am thankful I did.

I have just entered my thirteen year of teaching for the Bettendorf Community School District.  I started my teaching career out in preschool and I taught that for 8 years before moving to first grade.  This is my fifth year of teaching first grade.  I haven't had a lot of experiences using the AEA online materials.  The only resource I used from the AEA online materials was Book Flix.  I decided to take this course because I wanted to see what some of the other resources AEA online materials had to offer.

My name is Andy McQuillen.  I am currently the 7-12 Principal at Gladbrook-Reinbeck.  This is my 6th year in this role.  Previously, I was 9-12 Business/Technology teacher.  I have also coached multiple sports and taught drivers education over the years.

I took a class this past spring via AEA Online.  Google Sheets was the name of the class.  It was a good opportunity to learn more details about a Google product that I use daily.  It was very easy to navigate through the class and I learned a great deal about the program.

This class is something that I know quite a bit about, but I wanted to learn more information about social media.  I have accounts with all of these social media organizations, but I feel like I need to understand them better to apply them to my world.  Up to this point, I have primarily used social media for my personal use.  I hope this course will allow me to learn how to apply the different forms of media to education.

Hello!  I am a teacher at Storm Lake High School. I teach 9-12th grade Art. SLHS offers many Art classes for students to elect to take. This year I am teaching Art Foundations, Drawing, Advanced Drawing, Painting, Advanced Painting, Independent Art, and Advanced Placement Studio Art. My past experience with AEA Online resources has been minimal. I usually just log in when we have PD modules to complete and Mandatory Reporter. I was interested in taking this course because I feel that it is important to always be looking for new sources and references for students. I wanted to learn and explore the AEA website with the intention of implementing new ideas and sources into the Art classroom.

I taught school full time for 34 years in Illinois .  10 of those years were in a Chicago suburb and the rest were in the Quad Cities.  In those 34 years of full time teaching, I taught 10 years in an early childhood special ed program, 12 years in lower elementary, and 12 years of teaching K-8 English language learners (ELL). The last 5 years I have taught ELL part time . This semester I will not be teaching part time due to an illness in my family.  In my years of teaching in Iowa, and although I had attended workshops at the local AEA and had taken some license renewal classes, I had not heard anything about AEA online resources.  I do remember my grandson talking about and using Culturegrams for a class.  I enrolled in this class for license renewal and wasn't sure what I would gain from taking it.  I discovered that I wish I would have know about some of these resources earlier in my years of teaching in Iowa.

I have been in the teaching field for 10 years. For the first 3 years I taught Social Studies and Language Arts, and for the last 7 years I have been the librarian at a middle school. I have used and explored several of the AEA online resources since I have been in my current position. I have also helped staff and students use them as well. I took this course to further my knowledge and understanding of the resources that are offered. I have only explored a handful of them and wanted to know more about the others and also learn more about the ones I already use. Knowing more about the resources will better prepare me for when I help staff and students use them in the classroom. The ones we have mainly used in our building are Britannica and Gale for research purposes. Helping students easily navigate and understand the components that make up these resources is important.

I am currently in my fifth year of teaching 3rd grade in my district. Before that, I was a Special Education teacher for 7 years.

Before this course, it seemed that I was far more likely to access the AEA website during my time as a Special Education teacher. I wasn't fully cognizant of the way that AEA educational resources can serve to further enhance my students' learning. BookFlix, TrueFlix, the AEA Digital Library--these are online resources that will now become an integrated part of my lesson planning week-in and week-out.

Regarding why I was interested in taking this particular course: I want to continually increase my knowledge of resources that will help bring subject matter to life for my students, and there's no better place to do that than through the AEA.

After many years as a guidance counselor, special educator, and administrator, I am now teaching as a high school special educator serving as a math co-teacher.  Most of my career was in a private school with less direct contact with AEA services and resources than I now enjoy as an educator in a public school.  For that reason, I was somewhat unfamiliar with most of the online resources available for students and teachers.  My media center specialist let us know about a few of the resources, but not many.  Now as a special education/math teacher without specific materials for my math class, I have spent many hours online looking for resources.  I've also spent many hours looking for resources to help my special education students in other areas of the curriculum.  When I saw the array of online resources available, I thought it would be great to be walked through each of the resources so I can use them appropriately with my students.  

Hello!  My name is Jana and I currently am the 8/9 Science teachers at Okoboji Community Schools.  In my 15 years of teaching, I can honestly say that I haven't had much experience using the Iowa AEA Online resources.  I know that some of them are available and that I have maybe used them once or twice.  I was interested in taking this course so I could learn more about the resources that are available to my students and I.  I am always looking for quality sources of information, video and images to use for a variety of ways in our classroom.  I am hopeful that I have found a good collection to use!