Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Evaluating the GAME Plan

As I look at what I am doing toward reaching my goals, I am chugging along. I have a good understanding of the content and the direction I am headed. I have found some resources that have proved to be valuable to me. I have been in contact with my district's tech department and have run ideas past them. They are supportive of my choice to conduct a unit on Digital Citizenship and have decided to use my class as a test group. If the unit goes well then it will be used district wide. This is exciting for me, but does add some added pressure as well.

I am excited to also use my Blog as a major form of contact with my class, both poarents andd students. This will allow for a "no excuses" approach in my class. Everything they need will be right there for them. Only time will tell if my GSAME plan has worked. I will need to re-evaluate again in September and October to see what changes need to be made.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Monitoring the GAME Plan

As I carry out my GAME plan, I am quickly realizing that I have come to a stand still on one of my Goals. I cannot do too much with my Goal for parent and student communication. With it being summer break and class list not ditributed, I cannot do many things on my Blog. I cannot upload names, birthday, etc. I also need to see which students are allowed to have their names and pictures published, some parents will not allow this. Rules cannot be added because I allow the students to create their own classroom rules so they have ownership of them. Homework cannot be added for there is none yet. The only thing I can add to this now is sites for the students to visit once school starts, and field trip that are planned thus for. I will add a calendar with some important dates from the school claendar to the site as well. This Game plan is hard to continue because of the lack of information and the time of year.

As for the second GAME plan, I am still creating the lessons I would like to use to teach digital citizenship. I have found many great sites that have lessons on this, and it is a matter of sorting through the information. One problem I am running into is not having the technology I need to do this. I cannot create Smart Board lessons from home or Sentois quizes. This is a road block for me, again due to the time of year. I cannot create the activities when the technology is not available to me.

I have learned that there are so many resources on Digital Citizenship and sometime that is a bad thing. You can become very overwhelmed if you search too much. Learning to stop when you think you have found what you are looking for could be a good thing. In addtion, I have learned that my district is so far behind. We would like to think we are creating 21 century digital citizens but we are not. We do not do enough with technology. I want to be a ground breaker to encourage more teachers to do all they can. I watch the videos and see the classrooms with a computer for every student. Is this really realistic? I wish the videos would be more directed to the average school where this is not the case; teaching us how to over come the obsticles of lack of technology but still be successful in creating digital citizens.

Laura

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Carrying out the GAME plan

In order to accomplish my goal to provide parents, as well as students, a site they can visit, and have classroom information readily available to them, I need to make adjustments to the Blog I currently use. This past year, I used a Blog as a means of communication with the parents. With budget cuts limiting the amount of paper we are given, I decided this was a better way to communicate with the parents. I will not need any additional resources to carry out my Goal. I have the Blog set up already and I currently have computer access. I plan on visiting the blogs that some colleagues have for their classes and "steal" some ideas. I need to change the class information to reflect my new class, but cannot do this before the new school year, as I do not have a class list as of yet. I will begin to add tabs for rules and procedures, schedules (when I get them), and general information.

For my second Goal, Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship, Indicator: promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions relates to the use of technology and information, I will need to find a good nprogram to promote digital citizenship. There are several different sites I am looking at and may combined them to customize my own program. I also need to design the lisence they will reeive upon completion. One site that has a great deal of information is Digital Citezenship: Resources for Educators, (http://digitalcitizenship.ning.com/). I will be using the 9 principles of Digital Citaenship which can be found at http://digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html. These principles are what I will base my lessons on. I will also use Brain Pop to address these principles, http://www.brainpop.com/spotlight/digitalcitizenship/. I have located the resources that I would like to use and I am currently weeding through them to determine what I will use and how.

Although I cannot do many things to reach my end results before school is back in session, I think I am well on my way to meeting my Goals.

Laura

References:
Brain Pop located at http://www.brainpop.com/spotlight/digitalcitizenship/

Digiatal Citizenship, Using Technology Appropriately located at http://digitalcitizenship.net/

Teaching Digital Citizenship located at http://www.educ.ksu.edu/digitalcitizenship/TeachingDC.htm

National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

Thursday, July 8, 2010

National Education Technology Standards

After looking at the Standards and Indicators for teachers, I have found two that I would like to work on.  The first is from the standard, Model Digit-Age Work and Learning.  Indicator 3,  collaborate with students, peers, parents and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation, is one indicator I need to do better with.  I currently have a blog that I communicate with parents but this is not utilized by all the parents.  My GAME plan is as follows.  Goal- to provide parents, as well as students, a site they can visit to, and have classroom information readily available to them.  Action-  Create a blog or website for my students that parents can also access, that has classroom information on it.  This information will include, homework assignments, test dates, websites for students to visit, and classroom rules and procedures.  Monitor- I will monitor the website to see if students are visiting it.  I will also occasionally post an extra credit assignment, or secret code word that can earn students bonus points of some kind to see if they are using the site.  I Also need to monitor how often I can update the sites.  Evaluate-  To evaluate this plan, I can compare the number of missed assignments from last year to this year.  I can also compare how often I receive parent questions from year to year to determine if the information posted limits this.  I also will send out as survey several times throughout the year to ask what both parents and students have found helpful and what else they would like to see added to each site.

The second indicator I need to address is from Standard 4:  Promote and Model Digital Citizenship, Indicator: promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions relates to the use of technology and information.  I feel this is extremely important to cover with students.  Bullying, believe it or not is happening earlier and earlier in schools.  I had a fourth grader whom we had to enforce the no tolerance policy on.  Here is my plan. Goal: to provide students with an understanding of the proper rules and etiquette for using technology as a tool and for communication purposes.  Action:  create various lessons to teach the students rules and etiquette.  As each lesson is assessed the students will earn a puzzle piece.  After all the pieces for each lesson have been earned, the student will have a certificate of digital etiquette.  A Digital Driver's License for surfing the Internet and using technology for learning and communicating.  It is their passport to independent learning through technology. Monitor:  each lesson will have an online assessment piece.  This is how each piece of the puzzle will be earned.  I will monitor the scores to determine which lessons need to be strengthened.  I will also monitor the use of technology throughout the lessons and the year.  When students are caught misusing technology or being cyber bullies, they will lose the puzzle piece from the lesson that addressed the issue.  Those students will need to re-earn their License.  I will also use a survey to ask students their feels on the lessons and if they found them valuable.  Evaluate:  I will use the assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of each lesson, as well as the surveys.  In addition, as I monitor student use of technology, I can determine if they are having proper etiquette for using technology as a learning of communication tool. 

I believe by addressing each indicator throughout the course of the year, I can become a teacher whom using technology as a tool to provide students with new and creative and authentic learning experiences that meets the needs of all my students.