Cuentos de Alcaraz

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Technology As A Tool

The Process At the beginning of this whole process, I found it difficult to figure out what problem from my school could be resolved through the use of technology. My school is seriously dealing with a lot of problems that we had never really dealt with before since I started there ten years ago. To focus on trying to solve just one with technology, seemed unreasonable. How can I focus on just one and ignore the rest? Therefore, I decided to try to focus on one that would also tackle multiple problems, which is why I decided to focus on the Smartpass. I felt that starting there, it could eventually lead into helping with the ditching, loitering, and the group gatherings in the bathrooms. Fortunately for myself, I began this process with high hopes. This year we began with a complete turnaround administrative team. At the beginning, this new administration expressed their desire to turn things around and truly try to tackle the problems we ...

Reflections With Technology

The First Steps At the beginning of this whole process, I found it difficult to figure out what problem from my school could be resolved through the use of technology. In my personal opinion, my current school is currently battling a lot of different problems such as: students not adhering to the dress code, vaping in the bathrooms, lack of self control with the inappropriate language, which includes the usage of the “n” word, attendance, tardies, ditching, loitering, plagiarizing, lack of motivation, and the lack of quality of work, just to name a few. Therefore, choosing a problem that I want to focus on overall was difficult, furthermore, trying to find a solution for it was even harder. However, I was talking to a coworker, and she mentioned, at the beginning of the school year, that her husband’s school uses an EHall pass system in their Middle School to try to limit and control the students in the hallway. It was then that I realized that I can ...

Social Media

Working with teenagers is truly a challenging responsibility. I always knew how true of a statement that is. However, I always believed that with time and experience, it would be a challenge that would become easier. After 10 years of experience, working with them, I can definitely attest to say that the statement still withholds its value. It has definitely not become easier. Through time, things change, and with those changes it brings new challenges. They are challenges that no one is really ever prepared for. Going down memory lane, I remember that when I first began teaching, Snapchat was the popular app. In its time, the app seemed harmless, however, the app itself began to bring serious issues and my then teenage students began to make terrible choices in oversharing pictures that really should not have been shared. Students didn’t understand the gravity of how the oversharing could then spread and be distributed unwilli...

Reflections

As someone who is was not very technologically inclined, I am surprised how much time I have actually invested in technology these past few weeks. I have mentioned before that educating myself with technology in relation to education has been super important for me because of the environment that we are living in. Technology is literally taking over our lives in so many different forms and with that, it is going to eventually take over in education as well. Being prepared for that and for my students is really important and essential if I want to be an effective educator. With technology evolving, learning is also evolving, and technology is part of that evolution as well. It is my responsibility to adapt myself to my teaching environment and students and not leave them behind. Change Reflecting on everything that I have worked on these past few weeks, there has definitely been a lot of changes in my relationship with technology, especially in relation to ...

Digital Tattoos

Investigating myself brought a whole new level of anxiety I did not believe could exist. I mentioned in another post that talking about myself is something that I truly dislike. This felt very similar to that feeling. The anxiousness of not knowing what I can find is what made that feeling intensify. After the extensive search, I realized that there really was not much to be anxious about. There was not a lot of crazy information that I ran into. After completing my search through multiple websites, I realized that my digital tattoo is like one of those really small tattoos that you can probably put in places where they are not noticeable, like a small flower, heart, star, moon, star, etc. After multiple searches through different websites, the majority of the digital information that I found about myself were my age, previous and current addresses, relatives (although some were not always correct), and my phone number (sometimes it would be my ...

Professional Learning Networks

There are different ways that a large number of people always come together with different purposes. People join together at concerts to enjoy the live music. Others get together in family social events such as family reunions, Thanksgivings, and/or Weddings, for example, to celebrate together or to enjoy each other's company. Also, people get together for conferences or conventions to learn more about specific topics or their interests or careers. All of the aforementioned examples have a limited number of people that can be there together at once. That is exactly what makes a Professional Learning Network so unique and convenient. There is no limit to it, and you can access all of the benefits necessary for whatever purpose you may need at any moment. What is a PLN? A Professional Learning Network (PLN) is a dynamic learning environment, which will consist of people, spaces, and tools that meet an educator’s professional learning ...