POST #2: Challenges to Using Iowa AEA Online Resources

The use of the AEA Online Resources has will beneficial in supplementing my teaching.  With that there is so much information that it may be difficult to find the time to skim through it all.  I feel that time will be the biggest challenge to searching through the information.  I think the biggest way to overcome this challenge is to set aside a time once or twice a week to sit down and do through the online resources searching for the information or activities that will be coming up in the units for the classes that I teach.  I also believe, that using the search tools with the resources will cut down on the time necessary to sift through all the information, by using the search tools it should help find the best and most current information as well.  I look forward to using AEA Online Resources to help with to enrich my class.  

  My challenge is I am a para educator and my job right now does not require me to use these online
services. I will keep working with the online services to advance my knowledge of the AEA online resources.
 Sometime soon when I am more familiar with the services I will show my boss I can use them correctly and hope she wants me to show the kids these services. Remembering how to use and navigate all the
resources will be hard for me, but I am up for the challenge.
   I can think of student that I work with a lot that could benefit from your programs. I will try to guide them through the different activities and see which ones work best for her. I should go back and write
down all the key words that would help me follow the steps to the programs. Then I will be confident
on the different ways to move through the programs. I am not very computer savvy so this will be hard for me, I just need to look at all the challenges our students go through and buck up. I can't believe all
the resources the AEA has out there I did't know about.

I think the biggest challenge for me will be choosing to most applicable resource to use in my classroom.  They are all so great, that I want to get started using them all right away!  I think that will be overwhelming to both me and my students.  

I plan to look at our curriculum this summer and align which resources with it.  Using my time this summer, I will be able to dig deeper into the resources available.  I know that not every outcome will need an online resource, so I will need to carefully think about what is most important to each outcome taught, and how can I best enhance student learning.  I will set up a google doc or spreadsheet to help document the alignment and then share with my colleagues.  They will be able to add their thinking about the resources or add other resources they have found helpful as well.

We have the good fortune of being a one-to-one school. Every child K-12 either has an ipad or a laptop issued to them. In the elementary, students are each given an ipad to use in the classroom. I think the biggest challenge will be getting students to be comfortable navigating the online resources. To accomplish this, I will need to:
• Use the Smartboard to demonstrate to students how to use the resources that will be most useful for them.
• Help students to understand which sites would be most beneficial for their projects
• Spend a few class periods having the students explore the sites on their ipads
• Have students create a video in response to text getting information from Britannica, using images from iCLIPART, APImages, and/or Britannica, using sounds from Soundzabound
• Use Learn360 videos to provide background information on unfamiliar topics in the Leveled Literacy Intervention Program
• Have students use BookFlix to read about topics in our Leveled Literacy Intervention program and compare how the texts are the same or different

I think the biggest challenges to using the Iowa AEA Online Resources would be time.  Time seems to always be the biggest challenge to implementing anything new in education.  I am glad that this class was available to review and research what the AEA offers.  As a self paced class, it allowed me to dig deeper into what I thought would be beneficial to my teaching and my classroom.  Why all the offerings are important educationally, some are more relevant to my classroom.  I feel that AP Images and ClipArt
are a great resource for for Graphic Arts I and II courses.  I also thought the information on copyright is important for my students to understand.  
Overall, I think that the greatest challenge is to individually pick what works best for for classroom and your students.  Focus on a few of the offerings and really learn how to use the successfully in your classroom.  

This past year I did not use any AEA resources mainly because I wanted the students to focus on coding, which for many at the school it was a new and foreign concept. Now that I have seen what works, the challenge will be to look at each assignment and project to see what resources can be used if at all possible. For example, one my assignments focuses on creating a database in HTML. Is there a resource I can encourage students to use to find data, such as CultureGrams where there is a lot of it? Even though it allows you to set up comparison data between countries, maybe I can ask for a different kind of database requiring them to make their own unique comparison? I don't think the challenge is in getting the students to use the resources, but to make it relevant to the assignment or project. Another challenge is getting the students to use AEA resources as opposed to using a search engines such as Google. Students think Google is easier when it really isn't. Maybe it needs to demonstrated that using Google can be more complicated in the sense there is more advertisements and more opportunities to find incorrect information.

As so many others have shared, I too think the biggest challenge will be deciding what to use when. I will be teaching a new curriculum this year so as I look through the units I can keep in mind the resources I discovered through this course. I agree that it will be a good idea to start small and layer in additional resources as I become more comfortable. I do have some planning days scheduled with a colleague this summer and hope to share ideas with her. One step is to set a goal to use at least one new resource each quarter. This past year I found our students really struggled with their research projects. I would like to try doing some mini reports/projects using Brittanica, Gale and CultureGrams - perhaps as small group or partner projects to prepare them for their big end-of-year research papers.

As a special education teacher, one of the challenges that I find to using the online resources is the necessity to devote my students' IEP minutes to the remediation of their skills while trying to help them keep up with the pacing schedule in our district's reading and math curriculum.  The students bring their computers with them when they come to me for their pull-out minutes, but I don't usually have them use the computers independently unless I am progress monitoring individuals.  At that time I have asked the students to either choose BookFLIX, ReadWorks, or use Co-Writer on their computers.  During individual math progress monitoring I ask the students to work on Zearn or FrontRow to support their classroom expectations.  

Now that I have been able to learn more about the Iowa AEA Online resources through this course, I need to make the time to collaborate with the general education teachers with whom I share students to plan together how to use more of these resources in meaningful ways.

I have also depended on YouTube and Google searches in the past to find video clips, sounds/music, and images to help clarify vocabulary, provide background information, and extend/supplement lessons.  Now that I have begun to explore the resources available through the Iowa AEA Online resources, I will try to search there first.

I have learned about so many different AEA On-line resources that are available to use in my classroom with my students as well as for them to utilize from their homes. I can really see the benefits for these resources, but along with that comes many challenges too. One of the first challenges for implementing these resources will be the availability of the computers to my students. Currently our school does not have a computer for every student, so we have to share with many others in the building. This means that we have to sign up for computer usage well in advance of using them and sometimes it's hard to predict exactly when we will be needing the computers as each class I teach could be at a different spot in the lesson plan. Something I could do to try to alleviate this problem would be to schedule the computers for student use on a regular basis and implement the use of some of the resources like TrueFlix and Learn360 regularly into my lessons. I could also share a computer cart with another teacher and flip flop using them during our class periods. Another challenge that I might face would be forgetting how to use some of these resources before I get a chance in the fall to use them with my students. One way to help me so I won't forget how to search through some of the sights would be to re-watch some of the tutorials or webinars that are available for each site, put copies of my notes for each resource in a readily available folder with printouts of the source, and last but not least, spend time this summer exploring the different resources by making notes or lesson plans that include them to enhance my current units.  

The biggest challenge I foresee in using all the wonderful resources available through Iowa AEA Online is finding the time to preview the material I would like to use.  As the only Math teacher in our building, my day is packed with teaching.  This year, I will have 7 different courses to prep for, plus Academic Bowl practice during Seminar and tutoring before and after school.  This leaves very little time to preview new material, even though I am convinced it would be beneficial to my students.  I am worried that I will begin the new school year utilizing some of these resources, then get bogged down and end up back in the same old rut.
My plan for overcoming this challenge is to take it slow and steady.  I will begin with sharing links to the resources I plan to use on my Google Classroom and give a brief overview to all of my students at the beginning of the school year.  This will allow students to be aware of the resources available.  Some students will begin exploring on their own, but more will just forget about them until an actual assignment requires their use.  Next, I will choose one or two courses that are closely related and begin incorporating the resources into the curriculum a little at a time.  This will allow me to become more familiar with them and give me time to see how they will best fit before I try using them with all courses.

My biggest challenge will be feeling comfortable in sharing all the resources with my home school families.  Often when I share something they believe I have a lot of experience with it and I am not very tech savvy.  I  need to feel comfortable using the sites before I make parents aware of them.  It will take some serious time to feel like I know how to get around the programs.  My focus will probably be on the reading options first.  While I work with k-12, most of the concerns my parents have is around younger student's reading skills.  I also have a middle school and high school lit class and the resources will be a great supplement in what we are doing with that.

The most important step for me is to make playing around on each of the sites a priority.  Once I have spent some time looking at different options, I will need to share the site with my families.  My weekly newsletter is a good option because I can share one web page at a time.  The next step will be to use the sites myself for our weekly classes.  Not all of the options will work in our setting but all are a great resource to pass on.

The biggest challenges to implementing the Iowa AEA Online resources are 1) making students aware of the resources, 2) having enough technology to use the resources during class time, and 3) using the resources repeatedly.  
 Possible steps to overcome these challenges include:
1. Collaborating more with my teacher-librarian.  As I stated in my first post, my teacher-librarian is a huge advocate of Iowa AEA Online.  I need to meet with her more frequently to involve her in as many opportunities as possible for her to work with my students to inform them of the databases’ advantages and getting the students accustomed to working with them.  
2. My classroom has 6 desktop computers and 7 iPads available for students to use.  If I want more technology, I either have to send kids into the library or borrow iPads from another classroom.  Since Iowa AEA Online is web-based, students could bring in their own technology to use the resources, freeing up technology in the classroom for those that don’t have their own tech.
3. Google search is too often the first choice for students.  By informing the kids about the advantages of Iowa AEA Online resources early and often, I hope to alleviate that first impulse of Google.  Making the databases a requirement at first should familiarize them with it, then with repeated use, it should become more of a natural starting point for their inquiries.  

First of all, I am so excited learning about all the wonderful resources Iowa AEA has to offer! It's a little overwhelming at first, but so many choices which is great. I believe my biggest challenge will be finding the time to explore all the resources available. Finding and making time for researching is always difficult in the teaching profession because there is so much curriculum available. I am the only teacher in my department so I do not have the luxury of a team or other teachers in my department to brainstorm with. Our school does not have a full time librarian or curriculum specialist to help me, so I spend a lot of time looking for updated materials on my own. I do not always feel comfortable with navigating through new technology, so that takes a lot of time for me too. I will also need quite a bit of  time being sure I know how to help my students navigate through and teach them how to efficiently use the resources I choose.

I am going to pencil in time on my calendar this summer to spend a couple days a week just to focus on exploring and incorporating some of your resources into my curriculum. Writing down time/appointments will help me stay on track. I am also going to try and overcome my technology "fears" by working on and trying new sites and asking for help if needed.

The amount of resources introduced in this class was phenomenal.   Iowa teachers are extremely blessed to have all of these resources at their disposal.  I believe the biggest challenge I will face will be finding the time to more extensively explore these resources so that I am able to adequately instruct my students on the opportunities for amazing learning they can provide.  I plan to greatly utilize the summer down time to more thoroughly explore a few resources.  I think the best thing to do will be to narrow down the amount of resources to the top three most beneficial resources I feel my students can use for certain projects, themes, or activities that I implement.  I need to peruse those that I pick and experiment with certain topics or themes.  I also will need to brainstorm how to adapt a paper pencil project into one that can be completed with media.  

One of my biggest challenges with using Iowa AEA Online resources will be choosing the best resources to use with my students. Now that I have taught both levels of curriculum in my grade levels (3&4), I am more familiar with curriculum objectives and outcomes for each level. AEA resources certainly have many options available for differentiating my curriculum to better meet the needs of every student within my classroom. I would feel most comfortable beginning small- finding a resource to easily incorporate into my existing curriculum. I think my students would enjoy using the BookFLIX and TrueFLIX sites. I can introduce these within a regular curriculum class lesson, such as social studies or science, and then use these sites in a focus lesson and practice during our computer lab time. This would provide the students their own time to explore and practice using these resources. I can imagine that some students will enjoy the fictional stories in BookFLIX, while many others would also enjoy the nonfiction selections. I always like to make a literature connection for my students, and these sites will provide another great literature connection for my students throughout the curriculum.

I think like most of the post I read, TIME will be the biggest challenge.  The 2nd challenge is choosing which resources to use in my classroom and lastly having access to computer for students to use the resources.

Addressing the "time issue": My goal is to take the time at the beginning of each of my units for my 8th grade U.S. History class and 7th grade World Geography is to choose 1-2 online resources to start and then the follow year expand on these resources.  Then create a spreadsheet or word document to list resources I found that will enhance the learning of my students for that particular unit or Essential Question.  I need to just make the time to find the resources, whether it's during my prep time and at home on weekends.  This will be time consuming the first year but in the end it will benefit my students and enhance their learning.

Addressing the "access to computers":  We are lucky enough to have 2 labs to use (1 is not available for half the day) and 4 COW's to use.  I just need to reserve the lab or COW on regular basis, maybe once a week or once every 2 weeks.

The biggest challenge I will face in implementing the Iowa AEA Online resources into my classroom will be desiding which database will best fit the needs of my students and then finding the appropriate amount of time to train them on how to use the sites properly.  

The way I hope to overcome these challenges are to get very familiar and comfortable with each of the resources provided by the Iowa AEA Online site.  I will take the time that I have left this summer and get into each resource and get comfortable using the resource.  I can focus on the resource that will best fit my 4th grade classroom. I will not spend time on the resources that are not grade appropriate.  Sites I will be focusing on will be the Trueflix, Soundzabound, AEA Digital Library, Britannica Online, Culture Grams, iClipart for Schools, Learn360, and ScienceFlix.  

To be able to give my student the proper training will spend some time on the databases I plan on using the most at the beginning of the school year. I also plan on doing more training as we begin  projects that will require the use of AEA Online resources.

There are so many wonderful resources with the AEA Online.  With that being said, time has to be one of my biggest challenges.  For example, I love to include complimenting videos, speeches, etc. in my lesson plans so Learn 360 looks like a great resources.  However, finding the time to locate videos that really do compliment my material/lesson is the challenge.  I guess that's when I really have to practice what I preach in terms of searches -- typing in the best "key words", etc. -- or search by standards.
Another challenge for me, currently, is getting the kids to really use the AEA Online Databases.  I, as well as our media specialist, go over the tools and tell the students that we would like them to use them.  We explain how articles are peer reviewed, explain about copyrights, etc.  Although we go over this material students still find it easier to "Google" search something and are often not concerned about the source -- even though we go over relevant, legitimate sources.  I guess the key to overcoming this is to continue to explain the benefits, monitor the students while they search, and talk to them about the sources they used -- where they came from, if they are "good" or not, and why/why not.  Knowing my students, I have a feeling this will continue to be an ongoing process.

    The major challenge would be is that I really don't have instruction in my room.  I will occasionally pull kids if they are struggling but that time is used in dealing with the actually struggle from a class.  I'm often out of my classroom co-teaching or handling behaviors.  So I lack the direct contact and being able to dictate activities.  
    How I could overcome my issue would talking with other teachers that I co-teach with and give them some ideas from what I have learned.  For example, if there is something we are covering in class I could recommend using an AEA resource to help the enhance the lesson.  

I think the biggest challenge will be to find and take the time to the put resources to use in my classroom.  Also, because my students are younger, I will need to be picky about what technology is actually developmentally appropriate for a 4 year-old child.  Because of this, some of the resources will not be of use in my classroom.  However, for those that are good for preschool children, it will be a matter of choosing the resource that can aid in their learning.  Because preschool children learn through play, any video clips I use will need to be short and tie directly to a concept we are working on.  My plan is to use AEA online to enhance the great things we will already be doing in the classroom.  Finding a balance between resources that I can present to the children and resources that the students can use independently will be very important.