Aubree Clark's Portfilio

I enjoyed reading the first chapter of The Multiplier Effect and am excited to continue reading!  Many of us as educators have always known that micromanaging is not the most effective way lead people, but it was encouraging to see that there is evidence that the opposite tactics can produce even more productivity.  When reviewing the five disciplines of the multiplier, I was able to make connections to people that are around me in education.  It was interesting to identify certain people in my professional circle was "multipliers" or "accidental diminishers".  While reading the accidental diminishers section in this chapter, I found myself thinking "Why would any leader with good intentions do these things?!".  As I took the accidental diminisher quiz, however, I quickly realized that it is not so black and white.  Many aspects that some would view as great foundations of leadership can often come off as diminishing, even though not intended so.  I...

Participating in an Online Community Using various social media platforms in order to learn more about various aspects of teaching and education is my favorite form of professional development.  I believe that learning from other teachers is one of the best things that we can do to strengthen our pedagogy and to open our mind to new ideas.  The phrases "iron sharpens iron" certainly also applies to the world of teaching.  Also, when you get to choose your own "PD", it makes your learning much more meaningful and applicable to your own teaching.   It is hard to choose just one online community experience, because using social media for teaching has become part of my daily life.  I initially just began being interested in other teacher's ideas on things such as Pinterest, blog posts, and instagram.  This inspired me to create my own teacher instagram account and also start blogging about teacher-related topics as well.  It is still very hard ...

Promoting Lifelong Learning as a Technology Leader The question that I set out to answer for the fifth ISTE standard is “How can I promote lifelong learning of technology to improve professional practice as my building’s technology team leader?”.  I am particularly focusing on section B of this ISTE standard: “Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others”.  This portion of the standard is important to me because our building’s technology team is currently redesigning our vision for teacher use of technology and is deciding how to best implement some technology chances in a way that would appeal to all teachers.  One article that I read that helped with gaining more information in this area is “The Administrator’s Role in Technology Integration”.  While this article is geared towards administrators and ho...

Looking at the course objectives for EDU 6529, I feel successful in accomplishing those goals over the course of the quarter.  After re-reading my initial course reflection on the Danielson Framework, I can pinpoint the areas that I have improved over the past couple months, and also list some resources that can help me with continuing to improve on the goals I set for myself.  So much of this growth came with the focus on reflection, another one of our course objectives.  Finally, I feel as though I am headed in the right direction for being able to promote continuous learning to other teachers through coaching techniques.               The very first aspect of the course was taking a look at our own practice compared to our school’s framework for evaluation.  Using the Danielson Framework, I identified Domain 1 as a strength and Domain 3 as an area I can work on, specifically in engagement techniqu...

Our "TH" Digraph Story I chose to make my digital story about letter sounds, specifically the digraph TH.  Since I teach first grade, a lot of our phonics focus is centered around digraphs and blends, so I thought this would be a good project for students to work on.  This connects to the first ISTE standard because it allows students to use their creativity and imagination to teach an audience about a simple phonics sound.  I made this video with two of my students that were already familiar with puppet pals and iMovie.  I plan on having my students create something similar, and allowing them to choose from 4 digraphs: TH, CH, SH, or WH.  Since two of my students have already helped make this video, they will be a great resource to the class when it is time to make the videos on their own.  I plan on having students use the same tools that we did- puppet pals to create the digital story and iMovie to put all of the puppet pals clips together...

Providing Access to Digital Technologies at Home Working with the 4 th ISTE standard, promoting and modeling digital citizenship, I decided to focus my attention on equitable access of technology.  The question I set out to answer was: How can I meet the diverse needs of my first graders through technology while providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools at home? This is something that has been on my mind lately, especially with the increasing technology that I have in my room.  I’ve noticed there is a large gap of technology-related knowledge between my students, often separated by the students’ socio economic status.  Confirmed by an article that a classmate shared, many low income families still have a significant lack of technology resources, even in today’s technology rich society (Ribble, 2011).   While I can individualize my technology instruction within the classroom, this still has a significant impact to students at home.  ...

Modeling Digital Citizenship to Young Learners The question I set out to answer for Module 3 was “How can I model effective use of technology to encourage students to be digital citizens?”.  I chose this question based off of the ISTE Standard 3: Model Digital Age Work and Learning.  I wanted to focus primarily on the “modeling” aspect of this ISTE standard, because it is so important that effective use of technology is modeled to students from an early age.  Since I teach first grade, I model everything I do.  It only makes sense to model effective use of technology right along with my students, even when I am not specifically teaching a lesson related to technology.  If I am modeling the correct ways to use technology, my students are more likely to use it the correct way as well when they get an opportunity to use it.  When reviewing the Module 3 assigned readings, I came across the article “The Difference between Digital Literacy and Digital ...