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.
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Jason, it is good to see you again in another class. I would like to say that I am horrible in history and English, however, I do know that many of my students always talked about (during my math class) how their history teacher was using PowerPoint (as you mentioned) into the lesson. What was funny was the fact that the history teacher asked them to get into groups, one day and they had to draw a piece of information, such as the Alamo, Texas annex, and etc. Based on this information, they had to act the part out. Dr. Ross (2009) said that using a video camera for recording interviews can make the interview more meaningful for the students since they are creating something. Although, they did not know much about the topic the first round, they were required to develop an act of what their topic was about, whether it accurate or what they thought it would be. Nonetheless, a creative time for the students to play with history and then after learning about the topics, at the end, the students went back into their groups to act the real event out. I think if you were to use the video camera for the acts, for fun, they would be able to watch the pre-video to the unit and compared it to the final. This will show the students, as well as you, how much they developed or progressed and how much fun History really was. (or the previews can be played as bloopers... ::chuckles::)
ReplyDeleteReference:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.
My good friend is an english teacher and she has used a program called movie maker to create a western spoof on a piece of literature. It turned out great and the students had fun making it. I have used a website called Zunal to find webquests. Just some ideas. It looks like you have some great ideas of your own already.
ReplyDeleteJason, what software are you using to create your video journals in class?
ReplyDeleteThank you for the great ideas and insights. Video production has always been a hobby of mine so I really am looking to incorporate it more into my classroom. For now I have been using VoiceThread to create and share videos. To record I have been using the video recording capabilities on the couple of digital cameras that I have access to in my classroom. Eventually I would like to expand this type of activity into what Valerie and Jennifer mentioned with more acting and production. I think History is a great subject for this, because it gives students the chance to retell and gain insight from each other. Thanks again for the great comments and isight.
ReplyDeleteJason Henne