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**Welcome to my Digital Teacher's Manual!**



//"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."//

--William Butler Yeats toc

**What is a Digital Teacher's Manual? **
Whether a student, a teacher, a teacher in training or an administrator, it is not secret that there are **countless** resources related to content, pedagogy, standards**,** techniques, strategies, and activities at our fingertips via the web. The resources available on the web today are rich in content, in instructional theory, and in meeting national standards, all things educators concern themselves with. Finding these resources is one thing, but having a place to store them and refer back to them (to make use of them) is another: this is where the Digital Teacher's Manual comes in.

Essentially, the Digital Teacher's Manual is a place for a teacher to store resources that they think will be useful in future lessons. The type of resources that an educator stores on their Digital Teacher's manual is solely up to them. The main purpose is to make an organized space for teachers to store and describes links so that when they are designing a lesson, planning an activity, or need inspiration, they have a toolbox to go to.



My Digital Teacher's Manual
As a "teacher in training", the digital teacher's manual is not only a place for me to store resources, but essential **lifelines** that will help create for a successful semester in student teaching. I have decided to think of my digital teacher's manual as my digital "tool box", the place to go when I'm stuck, need to recall a specific strategy or technique that seemed to work well in my undergraduate work, or need inspiration.



How I Organized my Digital Teacher's Manual
My manual has been arranged in to nine specific categories: "Pedagogy", "Standards", "Instructional Models", "Lesson Planning Strategies and Resources", "Assessments", "Content Resources", "Technology Resources", "My Lesson Plans", and "Peers' Work". Each of these categories collects resources that pertain to an important part of teaching. Each of these pages is further organized into subcategories which can be easily accessed by a table of contents. Below is a description of the content included on each page:


 * Pedagogy: This page includes sites and resources that have inspired by pedagogy or reflect my pedagogy, including Paul Lockhart's //A Mathematician's Lament// and my math journal.


 * Standards: This page includes sources that provide descriptions of standards that need to be met to be certified as a teacher as well as standards that need to be met by students.


 * Instructional Models: This page includes sources that describe the main purpose of instructional models, as well as provides resources that describes a variety of specific instructional models that have been used.


 * Lesson Planning Strategies and Resources: This resource provides a list of strategies, such as motivational hooks and ways to differentiate assessment, to help plan interesting and engaging lessons for students.


 * **Assessments: ** This page provides resources that describe and offer ideas to employ the following types of assessment in the classroom: pre-assessment, checking for understanding, formative assessment, summative assessment, and writing effective exams.


 * **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Content Resources: **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;"> This page provides resources and sites that are related to content-specific material. This page was designed as a resource to go to when looking for a "refresher" on a particular topic or to provide students with an alternative resource to help students clearly understand the content within a lesson.


 * **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Technology Resources: **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;"> This page provides justification as well a a list of descriptions and resources that can be used to teach mathematics content effectively in a mathematics classroom.


 * **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">My Lesson Plans: **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">This page is a collection of all the content that I have personally created and developed during EDU 361, including a statistics unit, a middle school lesson on probability, a wikispace on how to help students correct their understanding of place value, and a wikispace on how to use Fathom Dynamic Data Software.


 * **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">Peers' Work: **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;"> This page i s a collection of the work that my peers have developed during the course of EDU 361, including their units, middle school lessons, and number theory presentations.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;"> I have included resources and websites that are related to the categories or readings that have been presented in class that I consider a good resource. As a future teacher who considers this manual a constant work-in-progress, organizing this manual as such will allow me to continually add information and easily access resources that pertain to the element of teaching that I am struggling with.



<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Why Having Digital Teacher's Manual is Important to Me...
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">In reaching the end of my career as a secondary education here at the University of Maine at Farmington, I have come to realize many things about education. First is that education is a vast and unique composition of pedagogies, instructional models, learning strategies, intelligences, learning styles, colleagues, students, and environments. Each educational encounter is unique and allows both the educator and the student an opportunity to learn and foster growth as well as a change or expansion in his or her perspective. In exploring and learning about education over the past four years, I have made it my personal goal that when I am hired as a professional educator, I will work to educate my students in such a way that their perspective of education shifts. Through varied instruction, exploratory learning, and allowing freedom in activities, I hope to change students vision of education as "filling the pail" and move towards the idea of "lighting a fire", reminding students of the true purpose of education.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 120%;">In order to provide my students with the type of instruction that will "light a fire" rather that "fill a pail" when it comes to motivation, a vast quantity of materials, resources, and instructional models need to be available at my disposal. As a new teacher, who lacks experience, the best substitution that I can have is resources and tools that I know work or have had experience with. The digital teacher's manual allows me to collect all the rich resources that I have come across over the course of my undergraduate career in one place. This will help me plan instruction, build activities, and vary assessment until I gain the experience that is needed to "light the fire" myself. Until then, this will be my lifeline, an ever-going work in progress that will help me become a better educator overall.



<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Image Citations: <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 70%;">**Apple Image (Used on all pages**): OCAL. "Apple" (2007)http://www.clker.com/clipart-3982.html <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 70%;">**Corner Image**: http://sullivanperkins.typepad.com/sullivanperkins/2009/11/spdesigned-logo-featured-in-communication-arts.html Date Accessed: 1 December 2011. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 70%;">**Math for America Brain**:"Math for America Brain". Dan. 2008. Source: http://www.mathforamerica.org/about-us. Date Accessed: 5 December, 2011.