Hello there! My name is Paige Jacobson, and you’ve stumbled across my teaching blog! Here I will describe in glorious detail my trials and tribulations in grappling and becoming savvy with various forms of technology and digital media for use in my classroom. I am thrilled to be a new teacher of English Language Arts this year, after having done a side quest to explore my love of gardening, sustainable agriculture, and horticultural therapy for a few years prior to working in education. I am currently finishing up my Master’s degree in Teaching Secondary English at Kennesaw State University and preparing for my first full year as an ELA teacher in Fulton County, Georgia.

As a teacher, I feel strongly about guiding my students toward being independent, creative, and critical thinkers; as such, I hope to encourage them to think outside the box, explore those little ideas that appear on the fringes of their thoughts, and embrace questions and uncertainty. I want them to be willing to take risks; to welcome challenges; and to be open to differences, change, and failure. It would make sense, then, that I should adopt this mindset as well, in spite of — or because of — my own trepidations and frustrations with technology. This blog is created in the spirit of that mindset described above; I’m probably going to struggle, but since I believe using technology and digital media in the classroom is important in this day and age, it’s a struggle I will embrace — thus why my blog is tentatively titled “Technology Trials and Tribulations.” And while I know that the phrase “trials and tribulations” usually has a negative connotation, for me it has a positive one because (1) I am owning the fact that I will face difficulties and will come out better for it — for myself and my students — and (2) “Trials and Tribulations” was my favorite game of the Ace Attorney video game series, and it is very dear to my heart.

If you would like to know more about me, check out my VoiceThread.

Upon Reflection:*

I chose to use VoiceThread to further enhance my introduction for a few reasons. Our professor suggested we look into other platforms — and I will — but I wanted to use VoiceThread because I saw examples of what it could accomplish, and I liked what I saw. I wanted a simple way to narrate some choice pictures that I would use to share information about myself, and I thought that VoiceThread would provide that platform for me to do so. I have used VoiceThread just a few times in other classes (but not in the same way), so I thought I had an idea of what I was doing, but then I tried making my VoiceThread intro and I found it considerably not user-friendly at first. Granted, this may just be me and my proficiency with technology, but I think it’s important for technology tools and platforms to be relatively intuitive and user-friendly to grab and hold onto users. That being said, I also feel that we as people would benefit from being more patient and taking time to figure things out: when I got around to looking at a tutorial, all was made clear, and I felt a little silly for struggling on my own for so long. If you would like to check out the tutorial that helped me make my VoiceThread, click here.

So, aside from the questionable degree of user-friendliness, VoiceThread is a good platform for creating presentations with various forms of audio and responding to others with voice comments. I think this is a great way to get students comfortable with creating presentations and adding the element of speech to them. This wasn’t really a thing when I was in school, but these days I have seen students create YouTube videos or other forms of presentations where they choose to speak for the camera as opposed to in front of the class; I can definitely understand the appeal of this, and I would be happy to allow my students to do this if it means they can be more comfortable and really explore whatever their topic is. It’s important for me that my students feel comfortable, supported, and free to learn, so I can see VoiceThread playing into this by providing students a way to express themselves and their learning.

Questions, Concerns, Suggestions etc.:

• How do you get multiple pictures on one slide?
• How do you make the VoiceThread continue without the viewer having to press the Next button?
• Are there platforms like VoiceThread out there, but better? If so, what are they?
• VoiceThread doesn’t seem to allow for much creativity and going beyond speaking over a presentation. I’d love to see the extent of what VoiceThread can do, but it seems pretty basic to me right now — which can certainly be a good thing if you want something without frills!
• VoiceThread should improve its user interface to be more intuitive and self-explanatory.
• I suggest looking at the tutorials provided on the Browse page if you are stuck/before you get too stuck on something.

*So, this blog was created as a “Makerspace” project for my graduate class called Digital Media & Technology in English Language Arts. One component that will consistently appear in each post is a reflection on the new technology tools, platforms, and/or digital media I incorporate into my blog to become more adept as an English teacher. For now, I have decided to call these reflections “Upon Reflection.”