Journal,+Module+4


 * Prompt: Reflect on your week as a technology user in the classroom **

My school is growing faster than we can build classrooms, so almost every classroom is in use almost every block every day. This means that a lot of teachers share classrooms and a lot of teachers don't have a home classroom but rather move around and fill in the extra spots. I am one of those teachers. Last semester I had my to classes in two different classrooms, this semester I have both of my classes in the same room. But, this semester that room is across campus from my office and the cafeteria, and I have lunch between my two classes. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time walking around. I am normally a very very organized person but this semester I have struggled a lot with misplacing late work that students hand me when I am doing something that isn't making a neat little pile of collected work and then putting into my nicely organized bag. Half way through this semester I had my students submit an assignment to the dropbox on our new LMS and it worked really really well. Then, for some reason, I didn't have them submit the rest of their typed work this way.
 * Description **

Also, the room that I am in this semester is shared with a health teacher who has basically every flat surface in the room covered with stacks of back issues of health magazines for her class. When I asked if she would be willing to share some space for me to set up a standard place to always hand in work, she seemed very uncomfortable moving her organized piles to accommodate me. Since she is in there 4 classes a week and I am only there two, and since her office is the only office in the building with this single classroom, I didn't press the issue. I did, however, request to not be in her room in the fall.

Today was the last day of regular classes and I was really frustrated with a few students who said they turned something in that I didn't have. They are the type of students who you don't automatically trust them, but I don't like to ever steryotype students and assume they are lying. My final decision was that they could e-mail me their work by midnight and I would grade it as if it wasn't late. This isn't entirely fair to those who did do their work on time but it also it wouldn't have been fair for me to assume that they were lying and give them zeros. Basically, the movement around campus and the fact that I don't have my own classroom has made cataloging papers a weak point in my organization.
 * Impact **

One of the changes I want to make for my class for next fall is to greatly reduce the number of papers my students hand in. Don't get me wrong, it's not the amount of work but rather the amount of physical papers. They don't need to turn in three drafts of a speech for me to grade or turn in all of their writing on paper: the drafts are for them and using the LMS drop box allows me to be more organized. And, when I am more organzied I can spend more time planning and implmenting creative lessons, staying focused and engaged during class time, and feeling cofidant that I am giving grades based on genuine assessments. I plan to have then turn in most of their written work to the drop box in the fall so that I can have all of the papers in the same place regardless of where I am when they want to turn their work in.
 * Intent **