Hi! My name is Nicole Pagtakhan, but I also go by Ms. P or Ms. Nicole in the classroom.
From my years of experience on the internet, digging through someone’s portfolio of works can be hard, especially when there’s one type of post you want to look at. I’ve learned many different skills throughout this semester, and I’ve learned about which tools might work best for me as I enter the classroom as a new teacher.
Here’s a quick introduction to me entering the 2nd semester of my senior year, it’s a quick get-to-know-me while experimenting with WordPress for the first time.
I’ve previously taught SEL lessons, but I’ve mainly written them out in Google Slides with the notes section as the “teacher instructions” and the slides being what I present to students. I think having a separate website makes the lesson feel more accessible to both students and teachers, especially if a student is absent and I want them to have something to work on. This is a step-up from my first post about using WordPress for more advanced websites.
AI is a slippery slope in many fields. In education, it can be a tool to generate ideas for students and teachers, but when people copy it word-for-word and take credit for it, it’s creating more avenues for people to not show their creative efforts. It’s overall great for inspiration, but in order to be creative, we must connect to our humanness and our individual ideas. Using AI is super fun, I would highly recommend playing around with it to test the capabilities.
Inspired by my own fieldtrips, this post was about how to use Google Maps in a lesson. I used it to map out different locations for students to walk to in Portland, OR. such as the different bridges and landmarks like Big Pink. Other uses could be for mapping out distance and measuring it without having to leave the school, which would be perfect for a math lesson.
Sway was a mixture of a book and a slideshow, and I felt that it would be a great way to make a “get-to-know-you” book with pretty pictures. Sway has a learning curve, and I felt that it was a little difficult but once you understand how things work, it’s a great way to present information.
I like that you can create books that others can see, and there’s many tools to make different types of great classroom books. I think this one is easier to use than Sway, and even though reading a book online isn’t the same as reading a physical book, you can embed more things into it like audios, YouTube videos, and photos to make the reading more interactive. This is a great tool that I hope to use in my future classes.
Google Forms are very commonly used these days, though this was my first time making one. Google Forms and Ziplet are great ways to give casual formal assessments without making it seem as scary as some other tests, and you can include photos, emojis, scales, and text boxes for students to report information on. Of the two listed, I’d like to use them fairly interchangeably.
I’ve used Google Sites before, but it has never been in this depth before. I thoroughly enjoyed designing the website because it’s much easier. In high school, I took a coding class and always commended people who could code their own websites, but because this is so easy and so personable, it’s a great resource for teachers. As I mentioned before, I think this would be a great place to post lesson plans or newsletters for parents so that they could have access to the materials even if they’re away for a trip or absent due to sickness.
This lesson was about introducing Canva, which is a great tool to making infographics and slideshows. Not only is it aesthetically pretty, but it is a great way for students to get creative with their work, and to show mastery of different skills and knowledge that they’ve learned in class. I use Canva for so many things even now, and I think it’s a great tool that everyone should get the chance to play around with.
A final post to celebrate my three years with UP. It’s nice to start the term and end the term with a little about myself so that I can look back at how I’ve changed and where I’ve started. Personal growth is something we can all work on and that is always changing.
…And that’s all of my posts! I hope that this gives you a nice overview of all the progress I’ve made, reflections, and inspiration for your future as it has mine!
