Ashley Pesch's Blog

  AI in Education  AI in education is becoming a bigger thing. AI is Artificial Intelligence. AI can complete human-like tasks, more so that are technology related. It is everywhere nowadays. Teachers are using AI to help support their lessons and students. However, there are so many different websites and tools that educators can use with AI that it can be overwhelming. I myself haven't used AI too much. I understand many things have AI built into it now. Such as Instagram with their “Meta AI”, but that’s about it. I would love to learn about more tools I can use in the classroom to support my planning and students' learning. With that being said, I took some time to explore three different AI tools for educators and I am going to share with you my thoughts! MagicSchool AI  Last school year, one of my colleagues presented on MagicSchool AI . She highlighted so many cool and fascinating things that it could do. I couldn’t wait to use it! I book marked the website right th...

Digital Tattoos Doing a data mine on myself is kind of nerve wracking for me. I was a little nervous to see what information was out there about myself. I am someone who keeps all their social media accounts private. At one point in my life, I didn’t have my last name on any of my social media accounts. When I first started teaching, I didn’t want it to be easy for my students or their families to find me on the internet. So now, I am very interested to see what is out there about me! When doing the data mine, I put my findings into a chart to show what was found on that site. Green represents that site had it and red means the site did not.  Source: Created by Blog Owner Google My first search was in a Safari browser using Google. I searched my name “Ashley Pesch”. Immediately pictures of myself popped up and I was nervous. However, I realized most of the pictures that popped were from my wedding website (which is public). Google was able to show my teacher Twitter/X account and t...

  What is a PLN?  A PLN is a professional learning network. This network is other people you can collaborate with, share resources with, and learn with to strengthen your role in your profession. Your professional learning network can be a variety of people. They don’t always have to be who you work with. They can be those you follow on X or teachers you share resources with on a Facebook group. If you are interested in reading more about my experience with PLN’s check out a previous blog post .  Everyone brings something different to their PLNs. I decided to take some different personality tests to see what I contribute and also what I can strengthen to make myself a better teammate.  Personality Test #1 Source: FiveFactorTest The first personality test I took was the “ Five Factor Test ”. This test was broken into five different categories: extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. My highest area with a score of 90% ...

  What is Accessibility?  Accessibility is something that is available to help technology users use the technology more easily. This is not just something available for students. All sorts of technology has accessibility features. Even the Iphone you use has accessibility features. Simple things such as increasing your font size or what the side buttons on your phone do are accessibility features that you may not even realize you use.  Accessibility for Students Students need to have access to a variety of tools that will make them successful in the classroom. Majority of students today have a device they use daily. Within the device there are things called accessibility features that allow students to access technology conveniently. All technology has accessibility features, it is up to the user (or in education sometimes the teacher) to turn these features on.  Majority of my teaching career (in my old district) I used Apple products. My students had iPads and I ...

Show Me the Research! It is so important for teachers to stay up to date on educational research. As educators we need to know what the latest trends are and how to best meet the needs of our students. Without staying up to date on research, it is kind of like going into your classroom blind. Research gives us such a deeper understanding of what our students need and why.  What Are the Stats Saying? There are so many things that influence our students and how they learn in the classroom. According to McCrindle , “ Almost half of Gen Z turn to TikTok (48%) and Instagram (46%) to teach themselves new things daily” (McCrindle, 2023). This statistic spoke to me for a variety of reasons. The first being that that the stat is showing almost half of this generation uses these apps to teach themselves things. It makes me wonder what else are they using to learn things? What is the other 52% using to teach themselves things? Another reason this statistics spoke to me is it is focused on Gen...

What is Active Learning? Cornell University describes active learning that truly draws students attention. They are not just doing the basics, retaining information. Students are participating in problem solving strategies, discussions, and more. I like to think the name says it all - the students are active in the learning and play a role in their own learning as well as their classmates' learning.  Jigsaw Discussions Jigsaw discussions are a great way to get your students engaged in active learning. This strategy can be used with most grades (probably third through twelfth).  How do you implement it?  Place students in the number of groups dependent on the number of parts to your assignment. The group students start in is called their “home group”. This group is made up of students each doing different things Within their “home groups” assign each student a topic or task to complete. No one in this group should have the same task or topic.  Once students have thei...