Amber Sidwell Portfolio
"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. " -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education
Goals:
1. Find tools that benefit students as mechanisms for learning yet don't have a sharp learning curve.
2. Incorporate tools that allow students to give and receive extensive, collaborative feedback on their work.
3. Select tools that allow me to make data driven teaching decisions.
Outcomes:
The following tools are those I have found most useful in my practice as an ASL teacher. These tools all serve a different function in my classroom and have been relatively easy for students to master. More information can be found about these tools, how they function, and how I apply them in my teaching, by selectig the icons below:
WebQuests that I have created to promote research and self-directed study:
Here are links to my Thesis and my Thesis Defense:
For other ideas and lesson plans that use technology as tool or resource in my classroom, please visit this site.
Educational Technology Philosophy:
Often in my teaching career, I have had a superhero complex, wanting to save the world. I have since clarified my role to be that of guiding my students to do just that: one person, one project, one day at a time. When they succeed, I succeed. We now live in a time unlike any other where our reach ast both teachers and students can be extensive and impactful on a daily basis, because of the tools that surround us.
Frequently I hear people proclaim that technology rules the world, but in actuality, people rule the world through technology. It connects us to more people than ever before. Imagine what this does for our students. Now, they can easily communicate their ideas all over the world. They can dialogue with actual people from other countries speaking the languages that they are learning. They can safely shadow people in their career pursuits from all over the globe. They can even work on classroom projects with their peer group without leaving the kitchen table.
Our classrooms can now come to life in ways that a chalk and eraser were incapable of facilitating. Now, the teacher doesn’t have to be a sole container of wisdom, but instead, a facilitator for investigative inquiry, teaching students how to learn the information they personally need in their own journey toward success.
Students enter our institutions of learning from every imaginable place, geographically, intellectually, and emotionally. As teachers, we desire to take them from where they are to where they can be by any means possible. This can often be a battle, but with the right tools, it can be an adventure, and I believe now we have the right tools or at least the ability to create the right tools.
The hardest part of our education system today is our own unwillingness as a society to change. When our leaders, parents, educators, and students take a moment to truly re-imagine the possibilities and embrace a balanced, student-centered, technology-supported, teacher-guided, learning environment, not even the sky will be the limit for the creative and intellectual potential of our students.
I believe it is time to remove the blinders, step out of the closet, and release our fear of what has come so that we can guide our students in designing what will be. Our future is in their hands, because they are in our hands, and because they are brilliant, the future will be brilliant as well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Academy of American Poets