POST #2: Challenges to Using Iowa AEA Online Resources

María Cummings
AEA Online Resources
Activity #2
Personal Reflection Option
June 23, 2018

     I started college the fall of 2000, at 38, and when I began I had no idea how to turn on a computer, so one of the first courses I took was Microcomputer Business Applications, ITEC1010. I was quite disappointed because I thought I would be a master when done. However, I only saw the professor four times, when grades and assignments were do. Throughout the course, the class was on its own, a self-paced course on how to use a computer without knowing where to begin; she said, “Just follow the text.” Now here I am taking a real self-paced course, with great guidance and real knowledge about computers, which has taken ten years, lots of errors, and many lessons, some from my students, who are all much younger than me, and patient teachers.
     I am excited as I contemplate the coming year and how I am going to spice up my lessons by incorporating some of the digital resources I have learned throughout this course. This past year our school became a Google school, with every student being supplied with their own personal tablet, and we mostly used them for research and writing papers. Now, I will show my students where they can find legit information on anything they may need by simply using the AEA Digital Library. With such search engines as Britannica School, GALE, ¡CLIPART For Schools, AP Images, and TrueFlix, among others, my students will not only find the information they need, but also develop new ideas, and feel safe in knowing that the information found is acceptable and the site is true. There are some students who do not feel as comfortable as I do using a computer, and I find that to be very sad, when all of their school years have been in the computer age. It is unfortunate that many fall through the cracks and it seems as if no one notices, year to year. Well, as President Truman once said, “The buck stops here.”
     I have been overwhelmed as I have tried to teach and reteach my students who come into my classes not knowing where to begin an essay or a report, nor aware that there is a difference in the two. Many are lost on the use of correct grammar, punctuation, and word use, among many other writing requirements. I refuse to let them pass by me without giving it my best shot, and helping them understand at different levels, even within the same class. Having access to curriculum instruction and assessment, as well as the learning supports will be very helpful in helping my students move forward and have a better chance in writing and expressing themselves in other classes that require better skills in writing and understanding the material. Keyword search will be a great help. I often tell my students that being able to understand the material and express oneself in writing or speech are major keys in succeeding in other courses.
I want to try EasyBib found within SIRS for its language translation of articles. I allow my students to use translators for some of their work, but they are responsible for making sure that said translations are correct in language use; some sites translate verbatim and do not take into account the idiomatic portion of language. Teen health and wellness is something else that caught my eye, as many want to know personal things but are afraid to ask. I wan to go through it all so that I can direct their search. With subject information on academic anxiety, bullying, depression, drinking, drugs, and eating disorders, it will be a great help, because no matter the school size or grade level, many of our students face issues over these subjects and worry alone for fear of being laughed at by peers or punished by adults. I know this because there are students who have come to me in search of answers, and I’ve done the best I could as a teacher and an experienced parent.
     As a language teacher, I was surprised about all that I learned on citing, copyright, fair use and research criteria. I have truly appreciated all the hard work that has gone into this class, so that students and teachers, like myself, can have assistance with our everyday struggles in learning and teaching. One good example is the use of Britannica Schools’ common core state curriculum standards for help in lesson planning, which will be something useful for me because we are required to know what standards we are addressing when planning a lesson, especially one that involves video. Sometimes it is not easy to decide which standard the lesson fits best.
     I intend to start slow, and work into using more technology as needed for 21st Century Skills, but I don’t want to give up my “old school” ideas altogether. Quite a bit goes well using both. One of my favorite things will be my students being able to have at home access to the site information, where their parents can also give guidance and see what kind of work the students are doing, be able to help in understanding the work, or perhaps trough their children learn something new.

Brooke Doyle

My biggest challenge is becoming familiar with the AEA resources.  There is such a wide variety and so many ways to teach and implement the resources into classroom practice.   I would need to start out with first selecting one resource that would best fit the curriculum I teach.  I would need to become very comfortable utilizing and search the source.  In addition, the students would need to be taught how to properly utilize the AEA resource.  Furthermore, it would be nice to recruit the assistance of the media specialist and other the support of other classroom teachers to also implement AEA resources.  The staff could even have a professional development day devoted to training for AEA resources.  

I have to say I am very impressed with the abundant amount of resources Iowa AEA has!  Everything that I have seen so far has been well organized and serves many purposes in education. One of the many reasons why I took this online class was to gain an even deeper understanding of those resources.  Social Studies is my educational/curriculum focus as of now.  I know Iowa AEA has many resources available for me to choose from.  Sifting through all the wonderful resources would be my biggest obstacle. I know I would have to focus my attention on the 5th grade social studies Standards first.  The best way for me to narrow my deeper understanding of what Iowa AEA resources have would be to narrow my research by going standard by standard and linking the most relevant and meaningful resources to those standards.  I know this would take time and patience.  I'm excited to start.

I think for me I have two big challenges before I can use some of the resources I have learned about in the course. Looking at student use, as a ‘specials’ art teacher I do not have a regularly scheduled computer lab time. Our building has computer carts so that is the best option for me. So working with the media specialist and scheduling cart time as well as having some additional adult support in the classroom would really help me use some of the student focused resources. My other challenge is becoming fluent enough with the resource to teach students how to best use them. To overcome that challenge I will pick the 2 or 3 resources I think will be the most useful to students in the art classroom and really explore what I can see as the best uses for them and become skilled at using them.

I believe that there will be two main challenges that I will face when using Iowa AEA Online Resources. The first challenge I foresee is the time it will take for me to find the appropriate resources needed/desired to use with the students in my classroom. There is such a wide range of resources available and I would like time to thoroughly dig into each resource to learn more about them so that I am comfortable enough to teach my students how to use the resources as well. This leads to the second challenge I foresee. The second challenge that I believe I will face will be finding the tools needed for the students in my classroom to access the various resources. Once the right tool/system is found for my students to access the resources, I believe that there will be many benefits to using the online resources.

There are many great resources here.  My subject area - music - might make it a little more difficult to find resources that are useful.  A large amount of my time is teaching kindergarten and first grade music.  I know that with my upper grades I can find a lot of uses out of the various resources.  
My biggest challenge, though, will be making these resources accessible to my students.  I can use them with whole class instruction, but for students to do their own research will be another story.  As a "specials" teacher, I don't have the access to tablets or computers for individual student use.  
That just means, I have to be creative in creating lessons that we can use as a whole class.  
I think more of these resources will be for me to supplement.

One of the biggest challenges for me as a middle school teacher is the issue of time. In a self-contained classroom setting with sixth graders, I was able to extend class periods when necessary to complete activities or even change the day's schedule in order to accommodate the time frame needed to begin or complete a big project. I have been teaching in a rotation schedule for over 10 years, with students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades for periods that usually run 45 minutes. Occasionally the schedule is set so I have a group of students for a double period, but this is rare. Consequently, I have had to rethink my time management strategies significantly. Having access to Chromebooks in the classroom has helped in this regard (trekking to the computer lab can really eat up a lot of time) but making regular good use of the Iowa AEA Online Resources has the potential to also help me make the most of the instructional time I have with my students. In addition to classroom time constraints, I also have limited prep time during the day. I prefer to provide my middle school students with links to websites I know are legitimate and safe when assigning online tasks. This process has become overwhelming with the amount of material available online. Using the AEA Online Resources will be reassuring, as I know I am sending students to responsibly maintained web resources with valuable information.

Another challenge for me personally is keeping track of the excellent resources I have found for teaching a particular subject. I have always used a lot of additional resources besides my textbook (and in some cases I use additional resources more than my textbook) so I have this huge amount of instructional materials to keep organized. Also, the material I use for my social studies classes is changing continually depending on current events and new discoveries for example in archaeology. I often "change up" a lot of activities from year-to-year so that means finding new resources, which in addition to my bad filing habits makes using the AEA Online Resources very attractive. These resources have the potential to help me organize my teaching materials better and electronically - a much better way for me personally. I like being able to access things online and like making materials accessible to my students electronically. It saves a lot of paper, the information does not get lost, and I can access my plans and student work anywhere I have my computer. I am in the process of transitioning to Google Classroom which links well with the online resources.

 
 

Challenges would be first understanding all the AEA Online Resources that are offered (taking this course is a great start) and then picking one or two that you would want to begin integrating into a lesson in your class. Now that West Des Moines has implemented a Chromebook for every student having access to a computer is no longer a pain point.

Troubleshooting access with login can also be a pain point. There have been too many times to count where classroom instruction time is wasted as the teacher struggles to figure out why my child can not successfully log in and access whatever program is currently scheduled for that class period. This is then hard to troubleshoot at home as a parent when project time has to be made up somewhere else.

Our elementary media specialist sent home a compilation of different software that our children had access to when conducting their research, with login instructions. This was an great resource for us and continues to be used as a reference. Had a short summary of when you would utilize each database.

I think the biggest challenge in implementing these resources into my current classroom might be in teaching my students proper use and citation of sources. My students spend lots of time on the internet. Most of them use smartphones to look things up on a regular basis, and they can use their computers to write papers, create slideshows, and put their projects together. The ease with which they do all this is astounding. They are very fast at cutting and pasting, adding sound, formatting slides.
They are less adept at knowing what and how to cite their sources. This means that accidental plagiarism is a huge problem for them. The citation helps that are a part of many of the AEA programs will make citation just as easy for them, I hope. I know that I need to provide specific instruction that gives them time to use the citation helps in the context of their assignments.
I also need to provide specific instruction about what they should cite and why. The copyright section of this was course was VERY helpful in giving me ideas about how to do that. I now feel that I can reinforce skills they already have--they do know that citation is required and have been taught how to do it--by providing them with sources they will want to use and citation help that will make that step more meaningful for them.

I believe that my biggest challenge will be time for a number of reasons. First, it takes time for me to preview the resources to find what students will need. For example, I will want to preview any video I show which takes time. When I begin creating lessons and playlists/baskets for students I will need extra time. To overcome this I have learned ways in this course to use the advanced search tool to help me find exactly what I need.
Another time issue in my classroom are the new resources we have been given for most subject areas. Using the resources provided gives me less time to bring in my own resources for students. I will overcome this by finding ways to integrate AEA resources into what we are already doing to save time. I can use these resources to enhance our work instead of creating more work.

There will be multiple challenges I will face when implementing the resources into my classroom.  The first being how can I easily infuse this into Canvas which is the LMS our school is currently using.  We have a technology integrationist that is in charge of Canvas and will be a great resource to make this painless as possible.  She will hopefully be able to give me creative ideas on how to integrate this as well.  Another challenge I see is the sheer volume of material available is unbelievable... just how to get the information paired down, differentiated and organized to supplement a lesson.  Time and getting comfortable with AEA Online Resources is my only answer to this dilemma.  Lastly I don't believe many teachers here have used the AEA Online Resources so there will be a learning curve to overcome.  Introducing one resource at a time will be my plan of attack.  Small steps until students become familiar using such resource.

The challenges that I feel I will have when implementing these online resources are the abilities for using the technology, for my students.  Computer usage and website utilization and manipulation can be challenging and accommodations are usually necessary for access.  Movement through the web (URL, searches, following links) requires hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, higher reading levels, and many operations which require help from other adults or assistive technology.  These challenges can be overcome to some extent.  Exploring the on-line resources as a group instead of individually will expose them to the content as well as build cooperative learning skills. Limiting what resources are used or limiting choices for what is assigned can also help with these challenges (assign specific sites asking for specific searches or links, instead of more open-ended projects which lead to many choices). Using assistive technology is also an option.  Using switches, larger keyboards, and voice commands have helped with access  to technology in the past.  I look forward to trying some of these sites with my students, because they are very interested in learning to use technology and to participate in new experiences.

I feel my biggest challenge in implementing resources from the AEA will be the time it takes to organize and choose what fits best with the lessons plans I use for my instruction.  It will be a huge challenge to select resources that will enhance and impact the learning of all of my students.  Differentiation amongst the resources could take a lot of time to sift through…finding the things that will fit all of the various learning styles my typical classroom is made up of.  I can imagine it would take a lot of time to get used to navigating through the various resources that were covered within this class.  I am going into this school year with a mindset that using these online resources from the AEA will be a learning process for me.  I will overcome these challenges by getting more familiar with the options presented in this self-paced course.  I will get started by picking and choosing what seems easiest for me and reach out more to my colleagues who might already be familiar with these AEA resources.  

Kristopher

The biggest challenge I see for my students in using the AEA Online Resources is getting them to log-in and use them rather than just taking the “easy” route of letting Google find what they think they need.  As digital natives they are comfortable going to the internet for whatever they need.  However, they are also comfortable just “taking” what they need without giving proper credit for the material.  Many are also challenged by adding sound to presentations, other than what Google Slides provides, so having a ready source of other options could help them overcome this issue.  To overcome these challenges, I will teach the students how to use the resources in my classroom so it doesn’t feel like something that happens just in the library.  I’ll lead them through how to use the sources I want them to use, step by step, with each student working through the steps on their own Chromebook so they have firsthand experience.  As we work on presentations and projects throughout the year the expectations will include the use of certain AEA online resources and appropriate citations.  We can steadily add to our expectations and requirements of their appropriate use throughout the year.            

The biggest challenge in using the Iowa AEA Online Resources in the classroom will be introducing these resources to the students.   The students are living in a "Google Search" world,  and firmly believe that using an internet search is the "best and easiest" way to find information to answer all their questions. Old habits are hard to break,  especially for students who want to find information in a simple manner.

To overcome this I plan on selecting the resources from Iowa AEA Online for specific learning tasks,  then spending classroom time instructing students on using the resources.   Finally,  I will make using that resource a requirement of the task,  and not accept information from other resources as part of the gradeed task.   If the students try to take a short cut,  and use other resources off the internet as part of the task,  they will need to redo the project using the appropriate resource for information.

I think there would be two major challenges for me: searching and finding what I want, and finding materials in Spanish.

I think there is a lot of great information here.  But is it necessarily what i want and/or need?  I sometimes having a hard time knowing what exactly to search for or what my search terms should be in order to find the right stuff.  
I think many of the tools will be useful with my ESL students, especially when it comes to reading and comprehension.  But if there were more listening clips or materials that were comprehensible in Spanish, I would get more use from them.

Overcoming these challenges will just simply take time.  I will need to navigate through everything more-especially when I have a certain topic in mind that I want materials for.

Using my time wisely will be a challenge for me.  Time to search and find resources for me to utilize  relating to the First Grade curriculum, as well as finding resources that I can teach my students to use in learning centers. I always get off task seeing multiple topics and subjects when I do any kind of searching...thus my challenge will be staying on task.
One step at a time! Because I know we use the book:  "Wemberly Worried" by Kevin Henkes,the first days of school I have narrowed the AEA resources to BookFLIX and Teaching Books.net.  I will check to see if it is on BookFLIX, then use Teaching Books.net choosing Literacy texts by title or author.  My goal will be to access educational activities that I can use when teaching this story, and hopefully create a QR code that my students can use
in a learning center...perhaps an author interview. Lastly, to learn how to share the resources with my team will be important in my last step.

My biggest challenge is that my particular student that I am assigned  to as a one on one is not allowed to used the internet in any form at all.  To provide assistance to this student I must used the teachers password or user name, and then provide close supervision.  Thus for every classroom situation our process is slowed by the fact that we need to obtain the teachers permission.  Since the student lacks experience due to her ban, I will use what I have learned to walk her through the process and educate her on the available resources.  

There are several challenges I will face to implement the resources I found on AEA Online in my classroom.  The first one is which resource will most benefit my ELL students.  How will I find time to go through all of these options to find the best one?  Will I be able to navigate through these resources without getting frustrated?  Having so many resources at the tips of my fingertips can feel very overwhelming.  I really wouldn't know where to start.

I think the best approach to overcome the challenges I listed about is to sit down for thirty, forty, or maybe even an hour a day and just look.  Taking the time to sit and really try can make a task seem a lot less overwhelming for me.  If I just take the time, and go through all of the resources that are available to me, and look at each feature, then I will be able to decide what resource I could use best with my ELL students.  I know there are several resources I can use for my ELL students.  The hard part for me, is to decide which resource will best go along with each lesson.  

To the best of my knowledge, most teachers in my school do not use AEA Online resources in their classrooms. The biggest challenges for me will probably be: feeling a lack of support from my building peers because they are unfamiliar with what is available; logistics of obtaining student computers when I want them for my class; time for innovative technology-based projects like quality digital storytelling; and scaffolding for my multi-lingual students with limited English so that they understand how to use the resources.

Though I may feel overwhelmed with the vast selection of digital options to use within the AEA, I will probably need to tackle my problems of peer support and student scaffolding by starting with just one or two new resources, then devoting some time myself to learning it well. If I can become an “expert” in my building on a few resources instead of an amateur of many resources, I can be the one to give support throughout my school. Knowing a resource well will also help me to troubleshoot problems on the student’s end and better scaffold for their use. If I get stuck, I can contact an AEA support or simply choose another digital resource to try. The student computers logistics just depends on my foresight and preparation well in advance to know what materials my students need. For time and quality of digital products, I think that it would be most effective to make a unit around digital storytelling, instead of having a digital story be the capstone or “final project” to a unit simply to demonstrate understanding.