Monday, December 7, 2015
Hashtags, Twitter Chats, & EdCamps
While reading chapter two of What Connected Educators Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, Jeffery Zoul , and Jimmy Casas. I have started to see things a little differently than I originally did with regard to hashtags and twitter chats. I have to admit I'm still on the fence about Ed Camps though.
from my family to go to something that I don't know what I am going to be learning about, seems counter productive when I look at my insanely packed calendar to see if the date is available. I don't know what is going to happen at the Ed Camp, but I do know that I have a home TO-DO list that makes my head spin just looking at it. I guess this just something I will have to try out and see if it becomes my new favorite learning resource. We shall see!
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Why Not Do My First Post from Bed?
Hi! My name is Corri Trimpey. I teach 4th grade in Bellevue, Nebraska! Go HUSKERS! So we have this challenge/thing for all of us BTCs (aka Building Tech Coordinators) going on and I am behind in starting my blog. At first I was not looking forward to the task, but things changed dramatically in the last hour!
I've been trying to decide what insightful blog subject I was going to post about for awhile. I imagined this awesome, thought-provoking post that would be an inspiration to other educators. I kept getting these great ideas and then life would get in the way and I wouldn't get it down on pixels. I kept internally harping on myself to just sit down and do it. Which of course, never happened. Then I would start the process all over again and I would get so frustrated with myself.
This leads me to tonight. I'm laying here playing a candy crush type game reading a very informative blog post and a thought bomb hits me. Not a thought spark or thought firecracker, but an actual thought bomb. I sat up in bed, turned on my nightstand light, and started typing this post out while on my iPhone. About 3 messed up sentences in, I quickly texted my daughter, Dilynn, to please grab my laptop. She was watching tv by said laptop (Thank you Dilynn for saving me the embarrassment of my fat finger typos). Now, this may not seem like a very big deal to some of you, but anybody that knows me knows that sleep is my favorite thing ever! The fact I sat up, while about to fall asleep, meant it was a GINORMOUS thought bomb.
What was this thought bomb you ask? I realized I was thinking like my 4th graders. Uggghhhhh! I know I teach 4th grade, but I never in my worst nightmares thought I would revert to a 4th grader mentality about writing a blog post. Yet I am here to say, "I did!" Let me paint a brief picture of how my moment of clarity transpired.
First, I thought about how I have told my staff members that they just have to try something small to get some technology going in their classrooms. Then, my squirrel-like brain started thinking about how my students sometimes think themselves out of writing a story during writer's workshop at the beginning of the year. They build up a story in their heads and then have no idea where to start because the story has already become so big in their mind. OMG! I was doing exactly what I am always talking to my kids about not doing. I made the idea of my first blog post up into this HUGE growing, living thing that I would never live up to in reality.
In the fallout of my thought bomb, I remembered this video clip I always show my kids at the beginning of the year. It's from the movie Saving Forrester (great movie). Every year I show my new 4th graders this video and then we have a 5 minute timed write. I do it to help them get their creative writing juices flowing. 4th graders have to be reminded they have an amazing imagination just waiting to get out onto the paper/monitor. I also tell them that if they truly can't think of anything to write during the timed portion, then to write, "I am writing this because Mrs. Trimpey told me to", until something else pops into their minds. I explain that the most important part of writing is the actual writing. You can't make anything better, until you actually start writing. You have to start somewhere and then you can build on it.
One of the initiatives in our district the last couple of years is Growth Mindset. We talk about this a lot in my classroom and our building. I think sometimes we spend so much time helping the children adjust their way of thinking, that we forget to do it for ourselves. Education is a shifting force that many people are confused about, frustrated, and don't really grasp how to start switching their mindset to include technology in their teaching. As teachers I think we believe we have to understand something completely before we put it out there for the world to see, but we need to make mistakes to learn from them too!
Everyone has to start somewhere. Whether it is using technology in the classroom or writing a blog post that you stressed out about for way too long. I know I will make mistakes, and others will see my mistakes, but as long as I am continually growing and learning as a writer, educator, and person, then I know it will be worth it! So with that in mind, welcome to my blog. Hope you come back again sometime.
What was this thought bomb you ask? I realized I was thinking like my 4th graders. Uggghhhhh! I know I teach 4th grade, but I never in my worst nightmares thought I would revert to a 4th grader mentality about writing a blog post. Yet I am here to say, "I did!" Let me paint a brief picture of how my moment of clarity transpired.
First, I thought about how I have told my staff members that they just have to try something small to get some technology going in their classrooms. Then, my squirrel-like brain started thinking about how my students sometimes think themselves out of writing a story during writer's workshop at the beginning of the year. They build up a story in their heads and then have no idea where to start because the story has already become so big in their mind. OMG! I was doing exactly what I am always talking to my kids about not doing. I made the idea of my first blog post up into this HUGE growing, living thing that I would never live up to in reality.
In the fallout of my thought bomb, I remembered this video clip I always show my kids at the beginning of the year. It's from the movie Saving Forrester (great movie). Every year I show my new 4th graders this video and then we have a 5 minute timed write. I do it to help them get their creative writing juices flowing. 4th graders have to be reminded they have an amazing imagination just waiting to get out onto the paper/monitor. I also tell them that if they truly can't think of anything to write during the timed portion, then to write, "I am writing this because Mrs. Trimpey told me to", until something else pops into their minds. I explain that the most important part of writing is the actual writing. You can't make anything better, until you actually start writing. You have to start somewhere and then you can build on it.
One of the initiatives in our district the last couple of years is Growth Mindset. We talk about this a lot in my classroom and our building. I think sometimes we spend so much time helping the children adjust their way of thinking, that we forget to do it for ourselves. Education is a shifting force that many people are confused about, frustrated, and don't really grasp how to start switching their mindset to include technology in their teaching. As teachers I think we believe we have to understand something completely before we put it out there for the world to see, but we need to make mistakes to learn from them too!
Everyone has to start somewhere. Whether it is using technology in the classroom or writing a blog post that you stressed out about for way too long. I know I will make mistakes, and others will see my mistakes, but as long as I am continually growing and learning as a writer, educator, and person, then I know it will be worth it! So with that in mind, welcome to my blog. Hope you come back again sometime.
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