Discussions

Your Name and Title: Ms. Marija Petreska

School or Organization Name: Hristo Uzunov primary school

Co-Presenter Name(s):

Area of the World from Which You Will Present:Republic of Macedonia 

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): teachers

Short Session Description (one line):

In reality, my classroom is not very different from where I learnt twenty years ago. They have only different names now.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

It is never about the tool but the idea-what can you do with it. Twitter was considered that it will never be an educational tool (How could it, 140 characters?). Yet, the most inspiring reading this past year, came from a book named Storify and all the authors had the same first name Hashtag. There are all these teachers sending their thoughts to one place and creating an amazing book of ideas. And it is just the book that Raghava talks about on TED-A story from hundreds and thousands of different perspectives.In reality, my classroom is not very different from where I learnt twenty years ago. They have only different names now.

When I was growing up I had this unstoppable urge to draw over books (well, who hasn't), change character names, add scenes and give stories a different endings. I would write on the margins of a book, stick drawings of the characters and leave notes to the future readers. Now we have an app for it and students are encouraged to do exactly what most were expelled from the library for -they even have a name for it, it's called critical thinking. 

Remember how the teacher would come up to your desk and turn the page for you when you weren't paying attention and you held your finger on the wrong page. Now we call it Nearpod. When I flip the slide it flips on every computer, tablet or phone. If you remember how you underlined things you thought important, put question marks next to something you didn't understand. Well, now students can draw and write over my slides and send an immediate feedback on my lecture. 

When I was a student, my notebook was full of red ticks and notes on the bottom of each page, and my teacher would occasionally hold my notebook  up and wave it so everyone could see my work. We now call it like, comment and share. And the notebook is called a post.
I had Pen-pals, my students have communities. I wrote letters, they schedule hangouts.I had time capsules in a tin box buried in the yard, they send video messages to their future selves. I had homework, they call it dropbox. Copying the answers from the person next to you is now screen share. We called it cheating, they call it collaborating.
Imagine giving all the student a piece of chalk and lining all twenty of them on a single blackboard. It's no longer black, nor green but a white one. All twenty of them work on the same whiteboard at the same time and they don't even have to be at school. The best part is that you don't have to ever wipe the board, but create a new one for each lesson. And if you share your board with other teachers from other schools anywhere in the world, you can all work together.
We do have bulletin boards but virtual ones called Padlet or Lino and all our work is displayed in the classroom in somewhat strange art called QR codes.
We still have observation journals ,but now with Jelly and Google image search we are a snapshot away from the answer.
We still go on a field trips, only now Skype and Google have taken us from mountain peaks to sea depths, from every corner of the Earth to space, yet we never left our classroom.

The phrase you can now start the test no longer means pick up your pens but pick up your phones. And the going around the classroom and peeking over shoulders to see how far each of them got with the test, Socrative now calls it live feed.
I had a friend who loved Biology and read the lectures in the book before the lesson, so that she is ready for discussion. It's now called a flipped classroom and I spend hours and hours creating short two minute funny videos, or infographics that the students can watch or read and come prepared for the lesson.

There are however some things that have changed over time. Now students would read the same text over and over again just because they mispronounced a word  and it won't sound perfect for their SoundCloud collection of My Reading. 

They would rather do a quiz than take a break (Kahoot thank you for this one). They get excited over reading comprehension (It no longer means answering a bunch of questions but creating PowToonanimation or a Canva infographic). Now they are thrilled to make corrections on their written work, even erase whole passages and start over since Google Story Builder turns it into a video. They all keep journals, have published a Storybird book and have audience. 
They are mad about writing dialogues since Go Animate turns a simple written or read dialogue into a cartoon. Now they all behave and just for an extra point awarded to a monster avatar (ClassDojo) They even like creating flashcards (it no longer means a word with an explanation on the back but a Vine video)  They love grammar and learn grammar rules by creating comic books. 
Oh, I can go o forever, there are so many tools that we use. 

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: teachermarijaesl.blogspot.com

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