Educators should do their best to keep up with current technology trends that could benefit the classroom as well as trends their students may be interested in so that we will know what they are talking about if conversation presents itself.
I enjoy and use technology, but do not consider myself tech savvy. Luckily my husband is, and he is very helpful in that area. He usually has answers to my technological questions!
One of my goals was to create a display of my digital photos. So many of us are guilty of having thousands of pictures on our phones, myself included. I used to be an avid scrap booker. I used to love to create my own books with photos, stickers, date and time stamps...Then digital became the things and Social Media provided an excellent platform to share media.
For my goal, I really wanted to create a digital scrapbook to highlight a fun adventure we had. This past summer we had season passes to Michigan's Adventure and really got our money's worth! We went an average of twice per week. We also treated ourselves to the photo package so that we could get (digital) copies of all of our photos that the staff or rides took while we were there. We ended up getting some super fun shots of our family. Then, they just sat there in digital format, though I did post some on the socials.
I figured I would explore and attempt to build a digital scrapbook that could also be made into a book. There are many options available to have this done, it really just depends on how much money you want to spend on it. One option that looked intriguing was
chatbooks. This is a great option that requires little effort as it can automatically generate a monthly book using pictures from your phone. Another great option is
Canva. There are a lot of free options and ways to present a scrapbook that not only looks nice, but also has a professional flare. You can create them on your computer, share, download and print right from their website.
I decided to create a book with Walgreens. I like how quick the turn around time-sometimes ready within hours- it is and how easy the site is to navigate. There are videos and tutorials to watch as well as templates one can use to create a photo book. It is easy to use provided text or add my own text. The pages will tell you if your photo has low resolution, meaning it may not print as crisp as you might like. I found this platform to be fun and easy to use. I was able to create a book with minimal effort and the staff at Walgreens was helpful and accommodating to make sure I was happy with my creation.
I could see myself using any of these or more to share photos with parents at conference or an online communication in my newsletter. Some even offer a yearbook type book which could be a fun way to wrap up the year and collect memories of each group I have had in my classroom.
Another goal of mine was to use a wearable fitness device to monitor my sleep. I admittedly am not great at making sure I get enough sleep each night. I would like sleep, I miss it! There is just so much to do at home, at work, at school and then there is self care, when do I take care of me, when do I workout. I decided to try and focus on getting more sleep and tracking it with my Fitbit. It has been interesting with this focus and understanding my daily mood and when I might need more caffeine to get through my day! I definitely notice that I get the best sleep on the weekends.
Below is a random week I chose to highlight. I do have to bear in mind that the Fitbit is not totally accurate when it measures sleep, but it does seem to align with how I am feeling throughout the day. I ended up having a pretty decent average for this particular week. Adult women should get 7-9 hours of sleep per night, and this particular week, I did meet that goal.
I have been using my Fitbit to monitor steps and calories burned. I also just generally like it to have a watch, a silent alarm clock and stopwatch, literally on my wrist. I can also view incoming texts with my Fitbit. Overall I do like the sleep portion of the device. It can show when I am in deep sleep and how many times I am waking up throughout the night. I will continue to try and average more sleep per week and be more vigilant about wearing my tracker overnight.
Another goal was to go Geocaching. This is something that was introduced to me in the early 2000's back when most people had dashboard GPS or still using mapquest for directions! I had a friend who was super into it and he and his kids liked to go look for caches. I was a nanny at the time and took the kids I watched on some. They had a lot of fun, when we were able to find them. I found it to be complicated with the dashboard GPS. It often led us in the general area, but then without a pinpoint location or clues, we couldn't find them too easily and would sometimes give up.
Fast-forward to this goal for this class. I downloaded this
Geocaching app on my Android Smart Phone:
I was amazed at all of the options and how the clues were laid out. The app, not only helps you navigate the find, but also has notes about the size of the cache and what we might find there. There is also a difficulty rating, so we can decide how adventurous we want to be. You can also create your own cache to add on. This is something I could imagine using in an outdoor learning environment or a school that has some wooded areas to explore.
I took my kids to a few near our home and they had so much fun! They actually wanted to do more, but Mama doesn't like to be cold. We will mostly likely do this more in the Spring and Summer. We can start with the easier ones and work our way to the more complicated and difficult caches to find. Geocaching is a great activity that encourages teamwork and being active.
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