Bloom into EdTech: The Blog

If you are unfamiliar, Computer Science Education Week is December 9–15 this year, and is a week dedicated to getting students and teachers excited about coding. The Hour of Code is just one venue that you can participate in to get your feet wet coding with your students. If you have never participated in the Hour of Code before, I highly recommend you take a moment and jump on over to the FAQ section to learn more about the awesomeness, as well as to give it a try in your classroom yourself! Although you can technically host an Hour of Code anytime throughout the year, you may eventually want to do more in your classroom. CSEDWeek provides you with ways in which you can bring coding to your school. Regardless if you are a CS Teacher or a classroom teacher, teaching the fundamentals of computational thinking assists students with their critical thinking skills . Below is a brief list of some of my favorite tools. Code.org Price: Free | Privacy Policy | Ages: K-12 ...

It’s 2020 (just about) – do you know where your students' data is? As National Cyber Security Month (October) has come to an end; and as the dawn of New York State’s proposed Education Law §2-d protecting students' Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is upon us here in The Empire State, I found it a good time to share this playlist for staff development. I recently have used this at a forum where I had tech leaders, newbies, innovators, coaches, etc. take ownership in their learning and understanding of the laws and regulations surrounding privacy, security, and safety. Working collaboratively (or in solitude if preferred), they were able to contribute to a Padlet where further discussion was given after the chance of exploration and written reflection were given on their findings. Interestingly enough, not everyone in the room was familiar with every regulation. Many awesome conversations and questions were had…. Especially around student privacy. Of co...

Over the past few weeks I have been working with my colleagues on building online professional development (PD) courses using Schoology. As I went over the basics in Schoology (analytics, badges, updates) and spoke about course design, I wanted to draw attention to what online professional development could look like to teachers. As staff development specialists, we collectively analyzed and discussed what we believed to be an authentic online experience - one that teachers can emulate in their own classrooms. This brought up a conversation on the digital tools that are used everyday by educators, as well as certain settings found in Schoology. Instead of teaching about the digital tools that are widely used in classrooms (which is not the premise of their online PD, I take ownership of ed. tech), why not exemplify how they are used through online PD? This way teachers not only have the practice in the application, but can begin to understand the instructional reasoning behind usin...

During the 2018-2019 school year, I created a regional Professional Learning Community(PLC) entitled "Technology in the Classroom". This was a diverse group of individuals who came from a variety of schools with a vast array of technology competencies. We met four times throughout the school year and conquered many educational technology tools, practices, and theories. The last meeting of the year consisted of my PLC participating in a design challenge to solve one of the UN Global Issues. The premise of creating an environment in which they became a part of the learning process, was for them to experience learning first-hand that involved risk-taking, working with limited resources, presenting to a panel of judges (my wonderful colleagues) and, most of all, working collaboratively. After the presentations to the judges were given, we reflected upon their personal experience partaking in the design challenge. Great conversations took place about the future of educa...

I spent the majority of my career as a technology coordinator/computer technology teacher for students in preschool to 8th grade for the Diocese of Buffalo. I was thoroughly convinced that I was a great teacher. The thing is, if I was so great, then why was it that I began to despise my job and feel more like a programmed robot rather than a catalyst of learning? About eight years into my career, as I began reluctantly wanting to leave my profession, the answer became clear to me one wintry afternoon. I also spent many years crafting my computer technology curriculum to ensure there was a scaffolding of skills that were “real-world” (yeah, right) and encompassed many authentic (to whom? Me?) experiences for my students. For two long years, I kept going back to the drawing board and reworking my curriculum, thinking that had to be the answer. Then, a turning point occurred one fated wintry afternoon coupled with an ominous snow-packed sky. My computer lab had the computers all...