Our PDS group's definition (UHS: Myself, Andrew, Alexis, Mackenzie, Caleb) of a PDS: 

1.       A place where everyone, teacher, student, and administration, as well as preservice teachers can learn. Each should be able to continually learn from one another. It should also include reciprocal professional development. This allows every person involved with a PDS to have a chance at success
2.       A program that has a strong University to School connection. This allows for the linkage of liberal arts instruction and practicum instruction to create a well-rounded program for future educators. This also assists helping preservice teachers learn theory into practice as well as practicing reflection and inquiry.
3.       A place where all students, educators, and administrators can feel comfortable. This can be accomplished and displayed through collaboration and reflective practices. This also means it is a place of open communication between not only teachers and students, but a community. Lastly, a mutual respect should be found between students, educators, and the community. 

4. Must be committed to use cutting-edge research, technology, and theory. This is critical for increasing student learning and providing future educators with powerful teaching abilities so that they can be more effective educators. 

5. Must be an environment that places the needs of the students and their learning above all else. In other words, students must be the center of the PDS. The needs of the students must dictate the curriculum.
6. Has a responsibility to broaden the learning community beyond that of the school and the university. This is critical, as members of the community (particularly parents) can be an excellent resource if they are invested in the learning community. 
7. Should be used as an "instrument of change", and always look to develop new policy though inquiry-based practice.
8. Must be a program which establishes specific goals for learning and development and strives to meet these goals.
9.. The PDS is an extended learning community in which multiple partner institutions develop relationships with the schools that they serve. 
10. Work towards educational reform and school improvement in the area by integrating expertise and knowledge of practice as well as developing new approaches specific to that locality. 
11. Provides an environment that supports the learning of K-12 students as well as student teachers, faculty, and other professionals in the field. All members of the community can learn and grow from each other in the field. 

12. Develops a common shared professional vision of teaching and learning grounded in research and practitioner knowledge. Professionals learn by doing, not through rote memorization or higher education course work.

13. Allows for all learners to have equitable access to knowledge.

14. An environment recognizes and honors the diversity of students and multicultural curricula. 

15. Creates an educative community and enables educators and the students to make educational decision together. Is a learning process for everyone involved including the P-12 students and faculty, college/university faculty, and preservice teachers which helps build a stronger educative community.

16. Builds and strengthens the learning community by promoting life-long learning through communication, collaboration, and reflection. 

17. Helps future educators conduct inquiry, action research, and reflective practice to find the most effective instructional techniques and learning strategies in the classrooms.

18. A learning environment that supports candidate and faculty development within the context of meeting all children’s needs. Each PDS is committed to providing equitable learning opportunities for all, and to preparing candidates and faculty to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

19. A program that is always progressing. PDS partners work together over time, building relationships
and commitment to their shared goals. They develop new strategies, roles, and
relationships to support their work.

20. A setting in which new practitioners and P–12 and university faculty can learn to meet the challenges of 21st century education together, because the expertise and resources of both university and the schools support them.

Prezi

iPads on Prezi

Technology Reflection: Smartboards

Description/Experience
            The technology which was displayed to us in our seminar was a SMARTboard. These are a sort of digital whiteboards which display computer graphics on a touch screen, and items on the screen can be manipulated via computer or touch. I found that this particular technology is excellent for using interactive activities such as manipulatives, review games, and other touch-activated activities.

Application
            For an application of this technology, I would use an interactive map to help students review and understand physical and political geographic regions of the world.

Learners for this could be anywhere from 7-12 grade students, but the difficulty and obscurity of the assessment questions would vary by age group. For our purposes, let’s assume that these are 7^th grade geography students. At the end of this activity, students should be able to grasp the locations of various geographical landforms and important political states around the world.

            For assessment, students would be assigned a location on the SMARTboard map, and either draw the physical feature or region (with the pen tool) or place a pre-made graphic of a country or ocean’s name on its world location. The other students at their desk must also draw the landform or political state on a map handout provided to them. The calling order of students for this activity would be random, as to prevent a situation in which only the highest prepared students answer. This activity would be designed as a review game for either a large-scale map quiz or test, so the ultimate form of assessment will come through that. However, it should be apparent if students are grasping the material from both the SMARTboard and the handout.

• I would first pass out the paper handouts to students, and then orient them to the rules of the review game activity.
• Students would then be divided into teams, both of which would compete for some sort of reinforcement (candy, extra credit, etc.)
• Out of two separate hats, I draw both the name of four students, and one landform/country
• The student groups would take turns trying to get the landform as close to the actual spot as possible. Collaboration is allowed. The team to go first will initially be decided by coin flip, and then alternate going forward.
• Whoever is closest to the actual location will receive two points for their team. In the event of a tie, each team receives one point.
• Meanwhile, students not called up to the board are to copy whatever occurs onto their map handout.
• The team with the most points at the end of the activity wins.

Reflection

--Pedagogical-Content:

            There are two primary strategies that I use in formulating this activity. First is the power and importance of review. Assessing student learning through a review game is both a fun and powerful method of evaluating whether or not the content has been learned or taught well enough for the upcoming summative assessment. Evaluation in this manner is important so that core standards are met within the classroom. This strategy is appropriate for geography as it ensures that students are still accessing and using information about geography from earlier in the course.

           

The other method I use is cooperative learning. Working together on locating difficult geographical landforms increases the likelihood that they will exchange ideas about methods they use to recall the information. This is necessitated by the wealth of pertinent information required for this activity.

Students would initially approach geography as the study of maps. However this activity will seek to incorporate regional data which helps geography come alive as a living representation of both human and physical phenomena. However, I would worry that geography’s reputation as boring would hurt student motivation in my classroom.

• --Technological-Pedagogical:

This technology would help students work together to better understand geographical data. As a review tool, the SMARTboard serves as an exciting visual aid for students.

The SMARTboard would allow me to use a more constructivist approach to teaching geography in that students would be required to pull information from their classmates rather than me. As a learning tool, students would be much more motivated to use a SMARTboard and a friend than a textbook or atlas.

            Management wise, I would have to ensure that students in the classroom were not shouting out answers in order to help their teammates. Also, I would have be sure to orient the students (if need be) to how the SMARTboards work in general. In addition, I will have to both manage assigning students and landforms to the board while keeping the classroom environment orderly.

--Technological Pedagogical Content:

The SMARTboard serve as a powerful visual aid and review tool for assessing the students on their learning of geography. Specifically, this technology is better than others (iPads, books) for this activity as it puts students in the driver’s seat, encourages cooperative learning, and demonstrates correct information visually to all students in the classroom.

          Without this particular technology, it would be impossible for a student to draw and erase geographic,   regional, and political data on an interactive map, and be able to display this information to the entire class. In addition to motivational aspects, students

Technology Reflection Assignment


Description/Experience
The technology presented in the seminar was the IPad. This technology is a tablet that provides a variety of "applications" such as flash cards etc. In order to provide educational context. Being very familiar with this device and its capabilities already, little came as a surprise to me during this demonstration.

Application
 An application in the classroom for this technology would be using a map application to route routes taken by famous explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries, and compare them with later trade routes. The learners are 10th grade students, and outcomes would be a better understanding of geography, distances, and time periods in history regarding the age of exploration. Assessment would be simple, as I could walk around the room and check each map for completeness while using learning probe questions to assess knowledge of the period. Each group of students given different explorers to research with the iPad, and will present them to the class.

First, students would be introduced to iPads, how they work, and how to use them effectively. Then, they would be passed out to the class.

Students would be broken up into groups of 4.

Next, students could orient themselves with the iPad in a short 2-3 minute span.

Then, I will give a short explanation of the assignment, and instruct students to begin. Students will be given different explorers to research with the iPad

While students work, I will walk around the room in order to see if students are on task, help students in need, and check maps of finished students.

Student groups present their explorer/trade system and the associated map.



Reflection


--Pedagogy-Content:
I would represent the information in the lesson about explorers by calling it a mapquest, since students use cartography to find information. As for explaining the iPad, I would explain how essentially it is a little computer, but with a touch screen.
For this content, many students will automatically lose motivation because this think the topic (explorers) is avery boring due to prior experience with it. obviously, this will be a large barrier to learning for them, so the iPad activity will be used to generate interest in the topic.

--Technology-Pedagogy:
The technology would be used in my activity by serving as a research tool and displaying visual spatial data in a map.
This technology and its use in this lesson supports my teaching philosophy in that one must learn in order to teach. Essentially, students much use the ipad to gather information To present to the class, learning along the way.
Students must stay on task, so the educator must constantly checking for this, as the iPad is a very powerful yet distracting tool.

--Technology-Content:
This technology helps make this content more interesting, as students can visually see and creae the maps before their very eyes.
Since students are forced to research and develop the maps, the chances are higher they will learn the information at a higher rate than if they were simply to listen to me lecture or read it out of a textbook.

--Technology-Pedagogy-Content:
My teaching strategy, which is constructivist, is great for this activity since students work in groups and i act as a facilitator rather than administrator.
This technology will help me get through to student with its fun appearance, visual displays, and researching power. Therefore, this device could give a lot of steam to my lesson.
I would assess the activity and choose what strategies to employ afterwards. for example, cooperative learning is a great idea for this activity due to the limited availability of iPads and the complexity of the assignment.

EdModo Tech. Integration

McKinley, I enjoyed reading your blog post. You state a very good description of what EdModo is and the uses that it presents. I feel that a strong point in your post would be your activity that you are using EdModo for. I think that this would be an enjoyable as well as educational activity for the students to participate in. Also I think that your statement that the students will already know how to use this site is very accurate because it is so similar to the more commonly used Facebook. 

One thing that may add to your activity would be a better form of assessment. I feel that maybe a short quiz will add to your assessment. This is the only thing that I could find that may improve your activity. All in all your activity looks like a very productive activity and good use of the EdModo site.