Monday, August 21, 2017

EEND 678 Introduction

Hello! My name is Katie Trafton. I am a second grade teacher at Troy Heritage Trail in Joliet. I have been teaching at Troy for six years. In my classroom I have ten devices for my eighteen students. We have seven Chromebooks and three iPads. Each grade level in my district is assigned a different amount of devices. The number of devices increases in the higher grade levels. Each school in my district also has an iLab which contains Chromeboxes, Chromebooks, iPads, and a green screen. Each teacher is assigned an hour in the iLab each week and have the opportunity to sign up for additional time. We are a Google school and I have found one tool that I use daily is Google Classroom. By using Google Classroom, I can create assignments and easily send a copy to each student. I can then view the assignment as they work and leave comments and give them assistance. Another feature of Google Classroom that I like is that it organizes all of the assignments in folders in my Google Drive. Therefore, I can easily look over the assignments and access them whenever I need to. I also like that I can create multiple classes. Therefore, I have made a “class” for each of my reading groups. This allows me to stay organized and easily send different assignments to different students. I am very excited to learn more ways to integrate technology throughout this course. I am very comfortable using technology but I want to work on using it in all parts of my day in meaningful ways.

2 comments:

  1. Welcome, Katie! Happy to "see" you here, I'm just over in Lockport. :) Google Classroom is such a great tool - couldn't agree more with your point about its folder organization. Such a lifesaver for teachers AND students.

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  2. Hi Katie, nice to meet you!

    I am in right over in Elk Grove, so not too far from Joliet! The tech labs at your school sound awesome, I have never heard of something like that. We are also a 1:1 tech school, but with iPads instead of Chromebooks. I personally have never used Google Classroom, as we are a Schoology school. However, I would be very interested to see Google classroom in use; the fact that you can give feedback right away is awesome.

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