This week we have been talking a lot about assessment so I think it is fitting to do some assessing of my progress towards meeting my GAME plan goals.
Are you finding the information and resources needed?
For my GAME plan goals I have been spending a lot of time online looking for as many types of lessons for my units coming up to give students plenty of options for assignments and ways to include online collaboration. For my upcoming poetry unit I have been using the internet to learn about all of the different kid friendly poetry styles so that my kids will have a lot of choices for the types of poems they want to write and how they want to share their work. I am always going to be looking for more great ideas so I will also continue to ask other teachers for suggestions in my school and online.
Do you need to modify your action plan?
So far I've been following my action plan of starting the week by looking at the lessons planned and finding ways of integrating technology tools for collaboration and choices. I might modify that to start the month out this way so that if I need to make arrangements or if projects last longer than a week I can be prepared ahead of time for this. Also by looking at the whole month I can look at keeping the projects fresh by not using the same technology tools in a consecutive week.
What have you learned so far?
I've been learning a lot from reading and interacting on blogs for other classmates GAME plans. There has been a lot of great suggestions and ideas that I have looked at and thought that I could add to my own plan to make it better. One in particular is improving my class webpage and how one of my classmates plans on going about that. By making some of those changes myself I can get closer to meeting my own goals for collaboration and choices.
What new questions have arisen?
The questions that have been coming up have really been, how do I go about doing that? I might see a great idea like a weekly blog that students can communicate on and comment back and forth. The questions have really been about making the things like this that we've talked about and learned and how to make them actually happen. A lot of working through those questions is happening for me through trial and error. So far I've really enjoyed seeing what works and what just doesn't fit for my grade and class. I'm looking forward to more questions like these because they are providing a lot of great opportunities for trying things I might not have tried until I wanted to know more.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Carrying out my GAME Plan
Last week, in our Walden course we laid the frame-work for our GAME Plan. This week we are going a little deeper to find what needs to be done to turn these plan into reality. To do that, there are a few questions that need to be asked and hopefully with some self reflection and collaboration with classmates we can take the next step towards meeting our goals.
Q: What resources will you need to carry out your plan?
A: To meet these goals I really need specific technology tools that can be used for my specific lessons and units coming up. Some of those units are in measurement, poetry, Lewis and Clark, simple circuits, and the five step writing process. I already have considered wikis, VoiceThread, PhotoStory, google documents, PowerPoints, and WebQuests. If anyone has any tools that they think might be good with any of the units I mentioned, please let me know. You can never have too many resources, especially when I am trying to reach the goal of meeting students diverse learning needs by personalizing learning experiences.
Q: What additional information do you need?
A: To meet my goal of incorporating more online collaborative tools, it would be great to know which tools work best. It would be great to know which are the most accessible for younger grade levels, like my 4th grade classroom. I plan on doing more research on the subject, but it would be great to hear from some fellow teachers on the subject as well.
Q: What steps have you been able to take so far?
A: So far I have been looking at the lessons in the next week or two to find ways to add collaborative tools and activities that are personalized or meet specific learning needs. I'm working on a VoiceThread to add to my Lewis and Clark unit. As a wrap up to the unit I am looking at having my students create video journals from different points in the journey. Kids would be working in groups, picking out roles in the group, and then when finished they could leave feedback and collaborate with responses to each others video journal. Hopefully this project can help to meet my goals and any feedback about this project would be greatly appreciated.
Q: What resources will you need to carry out your plan?
A: To meet these goals I really need specific technology tools that can be used for my specific lessons and units coming up. Some of those units are in measurement, poetry, Lewis and Clark, simple circuits, and the five step writing process. I already have considered wikis, VoiceThread, PhotoStory, google documents, PowerPoints, and WebQuests. If anyone has any tools that they think might be good with any of the units I mentioned, please let me know. You can never have too many resources, especially when I am trying to reach the goal of meeting students diverse learning needs by personalizing learning experiences.
Q: What additional information do you need?
A: To meet my goal of incorporating more online collaborative tools, it would be great to know which tools work best. It would be great to know which are the most accessible for younger grade levels, like my 4th grade classroom. I plan on doing more research on the subject, but it would be great to hear from some fellow teachers on the subject as well.
Q: What steps have you been able to take so far?
A: So far I have been looking at the lessons in the next week or two to find ways to add collaborative tools and activities that are personalized or meet specific learning needs. I'm working on a VoiceThread to add to my Lewis and Clark unit. As a wrap up to the unit I am looking at having my students create video journals from different points in the journey. Kids would be working in groups, picking out roles in the group, and then when finished they could leave feedback and collaborate with responses to each others video journal. Hopefully this project can help to meet my goals and any feedback about this project would be greatly appreciated.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
My Personal G.A.M.E. Plan
Our textbook, Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use, describes the acronym G.A.M.E. as a set of four steps that individuals can take for self directed learning (Cennamo). I will share my own personal G.A.M.E. plan to strengthen my confidence in two indicators from the NETS-T.
G- Set Goals-
Goal #1- I would like to meet to strengthen my confidence in ISTE standard of facilitating and inspiring student learning. Specifically, promoting student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process. I would like to use online collaborative tools at least once a month in my classroom so that this takes place at least 5 times during the duration of the school year.
Goal #2- I also would like to strengthen my confidence in the ISTE standard of designing and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments. Specifically, customizing and personalizing learning activities to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources. I would like to have a project or activity at least once a month that gives students choices for how to complete the assignment so that it is personalized to their own learning style. Meeting this goal would let this type of learning experience happen at least 5 times with the duration of the school year.
A- Take Actions to meet those goals-
#1 At the beginning of the week I will look at the lessons I have planned and try to find ways that tools like blogs, wikis, and voice threads can be incorporated to let students collaborate and reflect. I will also connect with the other 4th grade teacher's in my building to see if they are interested in collaborating using these tools for upcoming projects.
#2 I will look at all upcoming lesson plans that all ready integrate digital and multimedia tools and see what other digital and multimedia tools can be added so that students have a choice in how they would like to complete the assignment.
M- Monitor progress towards achieving goal-
To monitor my progress I will have a chart that has goal #1 and #2 and a box for each month that is left in the school year. Every two weeks I will check this chart to mark if I have met this goal or if I still need to adapt a lesson plan or assignment to make it happen. If it is half way through the month and I still haven't met the goal of including these indicators once a month than this chart will let me know that I need to re-evaluate the next couple weeks to make sure that I can include these adaptations to meet my goals.
E- Evaluate whether the goals were achieved and Extend your learning to new situations-
At the end of the month on the chart I have organized to check progress I will have the name of each month and a place to write what I did and a score from 1-10 of how it went. By having this chart and details about how each month went I will be able to see if my goals were achieved and also if they went well enough that I would want to do them again next year. If I gave myself a low score on some projects when the school year is over or before next year begins I can look into changes I could make to have these assignments go better.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
G- Set Goals-
Goal #1- I would like to meet to strengthen my confidence in ISTE standard of facilitating and inspiring student learning. Specifically, promoting student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process. I would like to use online collaborative tools at least once a month in my classroom so that this takes place at least 5 times during the duration of the school year.
Goal #2- I also would like to strengthen my confidence in the ISTE standard of designing and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments. Specifically, customizing and personalizing learning activities to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources. I would like to have a project or activity at least once a month that gives students choices for how to complete the assignment so that it is personalized to their own learning style. Meeting this goal would let this type of learning experience happen at least 5 times with the duration of the school year.
A- Take Actions to meet those goals-
#1 At the beginning of the week I will look at the lessons I have planned and try to find ways that tools like blogs, wikis, and voice threads can be incorporated to let students collaborate and reflect. I will also connect with the other 4th grade teacher's in my building to see if they are interested in collaborating using these tools for upcoming projects.
#2 I will look at all upcoming lesson plans that all ready integrate digital and multimedia tools and see what other digital and multimedia tools can be added so that students have a choice in how they would like to complete the assignment.
M- Monitor progress towards achieving goal-
To monitor my progress I will have a chart that has goal #1 and #2 and a box for each month that is left in the school year. Every two weeks I will check this chart to mark if I have met this goal or if I still need to adapt a lesson plan or assignment to make it happen. If it is half way through the month and I still haven't met the goal of including these indicators once a month than this chart will let me know that I need to re-evaluate the next couple weeks to make sure that I can include these adaptations to meet my goals.
E- Evaluate whether the goals were achieved and Extend your learning to new situations-
At the end of the month on the chart I have organized to check progress I will have the name of each month and a place to write what I did and a score from 1-10 of how it went. By having this chart and details about how each month went I will be able to see if my goals were achieved and also if they went well enough that I would want to do them again next year. If I gave myself a low score on some projects when the school year is over or before next year begins I can look into changes I could make to have these assignments go better.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
EDUC 6712I-7 Final Reflection
As week 8 wraps up for my Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom course I can reflect on the information and personal growth I've taken away from the research, communication, and coursework. I will specifically reflect on what was striking about teaching new literacy skills to my students, what influences I will take away from this course, and a professional development goal that I will work towards relating to what I've learned in this course.
In the first few weeks of the course we started looking at what exactly new literacy skills were and what the education system would need to provide for students to be successful in the 21st century. This was best seen in our resource web article titled, 21st Century Fluency Skills, which included skills like the ability to analyze and authenticate a variety of information sources (Jukes). The thing I found striking about teaching these new literacy skills within my own classroom was that, although the list was at first quite daunting, most of the skills are already being taught within many of the lessons already in place. As I continue to develop these skills with my students I have been looking at which new literacy skills from Juke's list are missing in my classroom and ways that I can integrate them into the lessons I have coming up this year.
Many of the new literacy skills that we talked about in this course will be influential in my future instruction. The experience of creating a unit that integrates many of these skills was a great practice for how the things we were reading about and discussing can have real world application in our classrooms. I also was particularly influenced by the work we did with analyzing websites for credibility and usefulness. Our text, Web Literacy for Educators, offered many helpful tips like, examining the URL, asking about the author, and looking at the content rather than the graphics (November). I put a lot of these skill into practice when I created an audio sample application of examining a website that was questionable. I think these skills are incredibly important for students to gain at a young age, so I am glad I can apply what I have learned and done in my 4th grade classroom.
Our text, Reading the Web, contained a lot of great information about teaching students to properly search for information using the internet. Specifically they talked about getting students to ask inquiry questions and steps to using the internet as a tool to answer those questions (Eagleton). My professional goal for the duration of the school year is to integrate more inquiry and web research into my classroom instruction. To make this happen I plan on examining the lessons that I have coming up and how they could benefit from both inquiry and web research. I also would like to communicate with other teachers in my building and possibly collaborate on projects that they have in place relating to inquiry and web research to see how other teachers approach this task. To keep this knowledge fresh I plan on keeping the texts from November and Eagleton in my classroom so that I can refer to them when planning lessons and to also pick up on things I might have missed during our coursework. By next year I hope to have integrated inquiry and web research into every subject that I teach at least once a quarter. By taking some of the steps I mentioned I hope to achieve that goal so that next years students have a full year to focus on many of these new literacy skills.
In conclusion, the face of education is constantly changing, but it doesn't always keep up with the pace of technology. As educators it should be our goal to prepare students for the future rather than the present or the past. To do this students will need 21st century literacy skills and often the classroom is the only place where this can happen. I've gained a lot of experience and knowledge over the past 8 weeks, but I have a feeling it will be my students who will benefit the most from the work that has taken place.
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Jukes, I. (2007). 21st century fluency skills: attributes of a 21st century learner. Retrieved from http://www.committedsardine.com/handouts/twca.pdf
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.
In the first few weeks of the course we started looking at what exactly new literacy skills were and what the education system would need to provide for students to be successful in the 21st century. This was best seen in our resource web article titled, 21st Century Fluency Skills, which included skills like the ability to analyze and authenticate a variety of information sources (Jukes). The thing I found striking about teaching these new literacy skills within my own classroom was that, although the list was at first quite daunting, most of the skills are already being taught within many of the lessons already in place. As I continue to develop these skills with my students I have been looking at which new literacy skills from Juke's list are missing in my classroom and ways that I can integrate them into the lessons I have coming up this year.
Many of the new literacy skills that we talked about in this course will be influential in my future instruction. The experience of creating a unit that integrates many of these skills was a great practice for how the things we were reading about and discussing can have real world application in our classrooms. I also was particularly influenced by the work we did with analyzing websites for credibility and usefulness. Our text, Web Literacy for Educators, offered many helpful tips like, examining the URL, asking about the author, and looking at the content rather than the graphics (November). I put a lot of these skill into practice when I created an audio sample application of examining a website that was questionable. I think these skills are incredibly important for students to gain at a young age, so I am glad I can apply what I have learned and done in my 4th grade classroom.
Our text, Reading the Web, contained a lot of great information about teaching students to properly search for information using the internet. Specifically they talked about getting students to ask inquiry questions and steps to using the internet as a tool to answer those questions (Eagleton). My professional goal for the duration of the school year is to integrate more inquiry and web research into my classroom instruction. To make this happen I plan on examining the lessons that I have coming up and how they could benefit from both inquiry and web research. I also would like to communicate with other teachers in my building and possibly collaborate on projects that they have in place relating to inquiry and web research to see how other teachers approach this task. To keep this knowledge fresh I plan on keeping the texts from November and Eagleton in my classroom so that I can refer to them when planning lessons and to also pick up on things I might have missed during our coursework. By next year I hope to have integrated inquiry and web research into every subject that I teach at least once a quarter. By taking some of the steps I mentioned I hope to achieve that goal so that next years students have a full year to focus on many of these new literacy skills.
In conclusion, the face of education is constantly changing, but it doesn't always keep up with the pace of technology. As educators it should be our goal to prepare students for the future rather than the present or the past. To do this students will need 21st century literacy skills and often the classroom is the only place where this can happen. I've gained a lot of experience and knowledge over the past 8 weeks, but I have a feeling it will be my students who will benefit the most from the work that has taken place.
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Jukes, I. (2007). 21st century fluency skills: attributes of a 21st century learner. Retrieved from http://www.committedsardine.com/handouts/twca.pdf
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.
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