Summertime, and the living's easy...

It's the middle of the summer, and I decided to start blogging about the upcoming school year.  I broke my leg at the end of the last school year, which led to 8 weeks on a couch recovering.  But, it also opened my eyes to the world of Twitter...and all of the things I can do in my classroom and in my school to help spark a tech revolution in my world.  With a new superintendent leading our county who is actively tweeting and blogging, I'm encouraged to get out of my comfort zone and experiment with new tech tools for the school year.  It's amazing how a leader can inspire change by opening doors of communication and leading by example.  I want to use this first post as a place to document the technologies and resources I want to use this school year.

Twitter has led to many professional development opportunities in the last few weeks that I would never have known about - and that I think many of my colleagues are missing out on!  As a passionate high school American history teacher, I love finding ways of connecting my students to the past through more engaging and interactive ways.  I have found new resources by following hashtags on Twitter like #sschat and #APUSHchat.  Every Monday night at 7pm (East Coast), people interested in a social studies chat come together for an hour.  The chat is co-led by two awesome leading educators, and chatters vote well in advance about the topic of the chat.  Every Tuesday night at the same time, AP US History teachers meet to discuss sharing materials and how to approach content--we are finding that if we can be a week ahead in discussion, we can be inspired each week as the school year progresses.  Educators, connecting across the country and sharing their resources or best practices--so much more valuable that the hours I have spent in PD the last six years.  A few new sites I am really excited about using this year for resources are EDSITEment, Teachinghistory.org, and Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  I can't wait to learn more following the Twitter discussions throughout the school year.

Last week, I participated in a few webinars about integrating technology into the classroom with technology students already have.  The new move with technology is to use tech tools kids are already familiar with - their own.  It's called BYOD/BYOT: Bring your own device/technology.  In high school, this will be pretty easy to deal with--I can't tell you how many times I've caught students texting from their lap or their purse.  If I can get them to use the devices for learning, I think their perspective of their device will change, and they can open their minds to more creative, educational uses.  I hope to use Socrative in my classroom for drills, quick quizzes, or exit tickets, and I also see the use of Evernote for notebooks and organization will cut back on paper use.  I am also really excited to see the plethora of shared binders to peruse and add my own on LiveBinders.

With three weeks left, I want to narrow down my tech integration to a few new tools for my classroom, and I hope to use this blog as a place to reflect and record my experiences this school year.  I invite anyone to follow and comment on my reflections.  Here's to a new and exciting school year!