Connected Educator Month Reflection

Throughout the month of November, though I was a little late to the party, I participated in Connected Educator Month and it was a really wonderful opportunity for me! It has been 11 years since I graduated from college and 3 since I received my master’s degree and I am starting to feel the stagnation set in! Lately I have been feeling like I have been doing my students a disservice by not including more technology in the classroom (especially technology that could so easily enable them to communicate with actual Spanish speaking people) and this month not only confirmed it but made me feel a sense of urgency about the need to do so.

I feel a bit embarrassed about how little technology opportunities I provide for my students and I am sure that a segment of my co-works feel the same way or would feel the same way after participating in CEM. As someone pointed out in one of the conference sessions I attended, we, as educators, must be connected in order for our students to be connected! It seems so obvious, but I do not think a lot of teachers feel that way. It seems overwhelming to keep up with all the changes, but I think that by being connected, we can stay connected as new teaching tools and technologies are developed. Additionally, I want to be part of a culture that wants to be connected and I can be part of that cultural shift in my school. And to think—a month ago I did not even consider that there needed to be a more connected environment!

Over Thanksgiving break, I spoke with some of my cousins (one is a senior in a local high school and one is a senior in college) about things I have learned in CEM. A lot of what I talked about, they had never heard of. My college-aged cousin said that she felt so underprepared in comparison to other students when she went to college! I need to do my part in preparing the students at my school.

I really appreciated the variety of opportunities provided by CEM. Though I have a master’s degree in technology in the classroom, my studies focused a lot on action research and many of the tools we learned about in CEM probably were not even in existence at that time! Within the past few weeks, I watched videos and checked out tools and websites that I normally would not have, and I learned about all kinds of thing that I otherwise would not have. I loved the moments when I was watching a video from a conference that I thought was going to be boring and then I found that it was so interesting that I had to keep stopping it and reviewing sections so I could consume all the information that I could about it!

I love that technology provides for an excellent avenue for students to pursue their passions and for students to have a voice. I long to make the Spanish class experience become much more global. I want to give my students an authentic audience. I want to provide activities that cause my students to care about Spanish and therefore learn the language much better-it can be so useful in our society!

As I reread my initial goals for CEM, I see that I was ready to step out of my normal routine and get some new ideas—now I have too many new ideas! I see that I had ideas of connecting to other classrooms and now I know exactly how to do that through Edmodo and Educational Skype! I think it’s funny that I mentioned the use of Pinterest, as it was the only creative technology tool that I could come up with less than a month ago. Now I know that students can also showcase their work in Canva, Tackk, Thinglink, Tuzzit, or Moovly. They could use google docs or blogs. They can explore places through virtual tours. They can “app smash” and use more than one app to create a final project. I do agree with my thoughts in my goal-I do not plan on making a lot of changes quickly, but taking my time and implementing new things in a way that does not overwhelm my students or me!

I think the biggest difference between my initial goals and what I am thinking now, is that the blinders are off and I now see the need to be connected and have a growing Professional Learning Network (and encourage my co-workers to do the same-after all, a co-worked connected me to CEM!), as opposed to just making sure that my students are connected to other students, technology, the community and the world.

I think that from here on out, I will be filtering my lesson plans through the lens of CEM. How could I do this differently? How could my students work together? How can I give them more freedom with this topic?

A few reminders for myself as I embark upon a new era of teaching: It’s okay to take baby-steps. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be nervous. However, it’s not okay to do nothing!


Check out this Wordle that I made. It feels really great to see all the things in my head from the past few weeks put together in a creative word bunch. I can't wait to dive in :)