Online Learning

I created a Voice Thread discussing areas of concern in my own school and how online learning could alleviate these gaps.


http://voicethread.com/?#u1323459.b2161785.i11526639

REFLECTION- Reaching and Engaging All Learners Through Technology

Throughout this course I have been introduced to many new ideas and strategies to use with my own classroom.  As an English teacher I often struggle to find “fun” ways to teach such trivial concepts.  This course has allowed me to already begin changing my approaches and I anticipate to continue changing next school year.

To begin, I enjoyed learning about summative and formative assessment.  My school is strongly enforcing these concepts for next school year.  The average classroom consists of a wide variety of students. “Our classrooms today are more diverse than ever, with a wide range of interests, levels of readiness, and learning styles” (Smith & Throne, 2007, 6).  Teachers are accountable to reach each and every student as well as reach high level student achievement.  The days of simply giving an end of the unit test are long gone.  Students need to be accountable for their own learning and involved every step of the way.  

Next year, I plan to use contracts with exit slips with my students.  Students will be given their weekly assignments and have to complete them all by their due dates.  Then in order to leave my classroom, they will have to provide information about one thing they learned during that class period.  Also, I plan to incorporate more group projects for students to become more familiar with collaborative work.  Jigsaw groups is a wonderful approach to have students working together and then relaying information gathered.  

One key element of this course that I found to be most useful is allowing students to have choices at every step of the learning process.  Technology is a wonderful approach to providing students with variety.  Next year I plan to incorporate computer use even more within my daily instruction and my students will use them at each step of the learning process.  Currently I present my students with videos at the start of a lesson to peak interest.  Next year, I would like to have students doing their own research to learn a concept individually before consulting with the class or teacher.  Students will then have to produce a final product in order to show me that they understand the specific concept.  By doing this, students are accountable and responsible for their own learning as well as their own individual product.  I have found that PowerPoint, podcasts, and VoiceThread were effective with my fifth graders this school year.

There are so many changes to make in the classroom with the incorporation of technology.  This class has allowed me to work with many strategies and approaches in order to make my English class a little more exciting.  My ideas for next year are in place and I can only plan to continue changing with the constant changes and advances in technology.

Resources:

Smith, G., & Throne, S. (2007). Differentiating instruction with technology in K-5 classrooms. Belmont, CA: International Society for Technology in Education.

REFLECTION

The main objective of my GAME plan throughout this course was to incorporate more technology on the school/community level as well as with my individual students.  I found that including technology into my own classroom was much more simple than involving the entire school and community.  I was able to have my students create individual projects with the incorporation of technology and plan to use a PBL later in the school year.   Currently I am heading a committee whose main focus is to connect our students, teachers, parents and community.  Our goal is to find a website that is user-friendly and highly interactive for use by the school and its community.  By incorporating these site into our school system, we are hoping that students gain real world experience and community members can interact with the youth in the area.

Through my research for my GAME plan, I was able to locate much information about the subject of technology inclusion within the classroom and school districts. I was fortunate to   interact with other teachers that were extremely forthcoming with their resources.  Many offered school websites and their individual pages to use as demos for my presentation to administration.  I also found many activities to use in my own classroom with the use of technology.  From these findings I have already began to incorporate much more technology use in my classroom this school year.

This course has been extremely enlightening in the area of technology.  I was introduced to many approaches to use when introducing technology use.  One activity that I felt was very beneficial was assessing the authenticity of a website.  Often students feel if it is on the internet it must be true.  Showing students how to check a sites authenticity is a very useful resource for them to possess.  I also teach my students how to limit their searches in order to find reliable resources.  Many of the topics covered in this course were major issues for me in the classroom and I found these approaches to be very helpful.  I believe this course has allowed me to incorporate technology more successfully into my English class and has given me a firmer grasp on teaching my students the proper strategies when working with the internet.

GAME Plan for Teacher & Students

With the ever changing world of technology, teachers and students need to continually challenge themselves and each other with proper uses of these tools.  Students of this generation are expected to know everything about technology.  Well I have come to realize this is completely untrue.  For those who do know about the world of technology, they are still dependent upon the instructor to reinforce accurateness.  For this reason I feel my GAME plan with students should focus on Standard 4: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making (International Society for Technology in Education, 2011). 

This school year, my colleagues and I have witnessed our most dependent fifth graders we have ever encountered.  They are in constant need of reassurance for if they are completing something correctly or if something sounds correct.  We have already begun structuring our classes and grade level differently for next year, and this additional plan will do nothing else but support our struggles.

I am the teacher who works the most with the fifth graders in completing projects and incorporating technology into the classroom.  I believe standard 4 focuses on students working together with others to solve real world problems while occasionally thinking outside the box.  With students that are capable of completing these tasks, I am preparing them for the real world at the age of ten.  Imagine what they will advance to by the time they enter high school.  Students need to be responsible, accountable, and think on their own in order for them to succeed in school and out.  By aiming my goals and my student’s goals to master these areas, I have no doubt there will be a feeling of success at the end of next school year.

References

International Society for Technology in Education. (2011). NETS for students 2007. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx

GAME Plan Week 6

This week I had an opportunity to discuss computer issues with other teachers.  Many voiced concern about their personal computer in the classroom and the struggle to get computer time with students throughout the school year.  I also spoke with a special education teacher who has seven computers in her classroom.  She explained how they were mostly used for studyisland.com, which is our schools online standards-based assessment.  When I exited the meeting I was mostly angry.  These computers are stationed in a classroom where they are not frequently used.  In my classroom I have a classroom computer that is not even compatible with the student’s computer lab computers.  Therefore, last week I had to meet students in the computer lab before school and during my lunch so they complete their projects.  This is what led me in the direction of applying for a grant.

Therefore, I have started to delve into the world of computer grants for my school.  I have started to research some areas in which I can apply for grants.  While I am not quite at the stage where I am writing my application, I have found some resources to assist with wording and format for such an application.  I was not fully aware of the impact wording had on receiving such grants.  For example simply stating you need computers because you want students to type essays or to do research, will definitely not get you the grant.  However, if you want students to generate questions in which to ask experts in another state, your chances are much greater.  I am slowly gaining more knowledge in the area of grants and hope to continue.

As for students: They have been presenting their technology projects throughout the last week.  I was impressed with how creative some of the groups were and how little creativity some of my other students possess.  The final products varied from skits with background pictures on the screen to VoiceThread creations to PowerPoint presentations with illustrations and music.  I am pleased to say that by giving students freedom in their creations, it allowed them to think a little on their own as opposed to constantly asking the instructor what should be done.  

Week 5 GAME Plan Update

There has been little progress in reaching my GAME plan on the school front, however, I have seen some improvements with my students and technology. I have mostly completed research throughout the last week in order to find new approaches/ideas to incorporate technology into my school.  

Students completed their choice Dr. Seuss projects and they will begin presenting them on Friday.  Students were very successful with creating projects in Power Point and were very creative in what they produced.  I had some students create poems, others songs, and still others wrote their own Dr. Seuss story.  One group created a Power Point birthday card for Dr. Seuss including a poem and then added their voices using VoiceThread.  While, I have not been able to convince administration to use more technology, I am trying to introduce many new ideas and strategies to my students in the form of technology.

I have also begun to discuss possible PBL’s to complete at the end of the school year.  The Reading teacher and I have been bouncing ideas off of one another and I believe we have created one great idea for a PBL and an exciting project to use technology with.  Maybe input from you all will lead us in the right direction.  The first incorporates reading, writing, and social studies.  The project will explain that all social studies books have vanished and it is up to the students to create instructional materials for teachers to use to instruct history.  Students will need to choose an event from the 21st century, research the event, create a product, and present it to classmates.  This project will have students practice research, a task we have already done, and then apply that information to a final product.  The second incorporate math, reading, writing, geography, and possibly science.  We will ask students to choose any place in the world to visit.  After researching the place, hotel, flight, geography, climate, etc., students will need to create a brochure persuading students come visit their destination site.

As for the latest update with administration- no such luck.  The G&T teacher and I have sat down to have our initial conversation about making progress in the world of technology.  When I discussed some of the many ideas, materials, programs, etc. I have learned throughout this course, she was just as eager as I am to implement them within our school.  I have started to think of ways to communicate with the community after viewing the video in this week’s resources.  I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about Chan Gray’s third grade class, in which students chose an organization to donate to and then had to retail shop for materials needed.  Each year our school chooses organizations to donate to and we collect materials.  I liked the idea of asking parents to contribute money and then my class can shop online to find the most materials for the least amount of money. The only way in which I can communicate with the community is by sending out a flyer.  As you can imagine, most flyers do not make it into the hands of a guardian once my students receive them.  With an interactive school site, I would be able to relay this information directly to parents, explain what is going on in the classroom, respond to any questions, and visually show parents the work the students are completing.  I plan to use this activity when I approach administration during the summer.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Spotlight on technology: problem-based learning [Webcast]. Integrating technology across the content area. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

As is the case with all goals, you must constantly modify, change, correct, etc.  My goal focused on connecting with the outside community, parents, colleagues, and children with the use of technology.  I was able to find numerous sources to use with the assistance of colleagues.  I have also discussed technology use within school with both my mentor and my principal.  From these discussions and research, I have found that I may need to change my expectations or outcomes of this goal.

To begin my students, while they are supposed to be the technological generation, have very limited abilities when it comes to the computer.  For example, this week I assigned a computer based test on dialogue.  I posted the Word document to my subject page on our homework site, homeworknow.com.  I presented the test to students and explained they would have to revise the writing and then submit it via email or print out a hard copy.  I looked out to a room of mouths dropped and eyes bulging.  They had no idea what was being asked of them and instantly hands shot up in the air for directions.  Later that day, I checked emails to find numerous concerns and questions from parents.  In this day and age, not knowing how to save and attach a document is unheard of, yet in my district it still seems foreign to some.

While this is a huge issue, it is not the most severe.  Within my school there are no guidelines for internet and technology use.  Therefore, most teachers avoid implementing technology within their classrooms.  I, however, wanted to create a blog for my students last year.  I had planned to use these blogs with writing assignments.  The major goal was to “support collaboration and help students develop critical communication skills by guiding their responses to classmates’ postings, (Cennamo & Erthmer, 2009, 74). They were extremely excited and couldn’t wait to take part in my maiden voyage through the world of blogs.  My voyage came to a stop when I was approached by my principal stating I could not create a blog through school.  My own personal blog would be acceptable, but attaching myself or my school was not permitted.  I had written consent from each parent, but was still denied.  My students were heart broken and I couldn’t believe in this generation, being denied internet access.  While my school does have a website that supplies parents with information and another site in which parents can check homework, grades, tests, etc., it does not have an interactive webpage in which communication between teacher, parents, and students could be made easier.

After experiencing these two glitches, I now know I need to make some changes to my game plan and implement a new structure.  To begin, any outside information needed, for example, a problem occurring within the area, I along with my students will have to find from researching.  Students can choose real world topics from their own findings as opposed to being given topics from people within the community.  The second change is going to be for our school website.  After discussing with a colleague in another school, I was introduced to a great site, edu.glogster.com.  This site is where the school’s main information can be found, but it also links to individual teachers.  Teachers can post due dates, assignments, tests, etc. on to their individual page.  They also can post discussion questions, which is similar to what I am doing in my masters program, and students can access the page and post a response.  The key element of this program is that the student creates a username, but no one has access to student’s real name besides the teacher.  Privacy and accessibility were the issues that arose with my principal.  I plan to meet with another teacher, who is interested in incorporating more technology school wide, and present these sources to the principal, colleagues, administration.  Why not implement a technology tool that is aligned with 21st century skills?

From this plan, I have realized that I am currently teaching in a school that needs to incorporate much more technology.  Privacy and accessibility issues should not be the reasons our students are not capable of using computers correctly.  I know I cannot approach these issues solo, and have already begun discussing changes with colleagues.  While some are reluctant due to their inabilities with the computer, they realize this generation needs to learn technology skills in order to be successful in the real world.  

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.