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

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.

Reflection

As I look back through the course material, I am struck by the thoughts of Thomas Freedman.  "Those who have the ability to manage massive amounts of information. . .  will have the capacity to contribute more to society," (November, 2008, p.2).  Is is my job to prepare students to be contributors.  If they are unable to "read" the web, I am not preparing them properly.  Literacy is no longer reading the words in a book.  Being literate requires using skills to accomplish a goal, according to David Warlick, (Laureate Education Inc., 2009).  Times have changes!  Signing "X" on the line used to mean you were literate, then writing your name, and reading words on a page.  Now reading the words is not enough.  You need to be able to interpret, comprehend and infer when you read.  Once you add the digital world into this, you need to be able to do even more.  The New Literacies, which include Questioning, Searching, Evaluating, Synthesizing and Communicating, are new skills that need to be modeled and taught.  Students need to be able to navigate, and discriminate information on the web for their own purposes.  This is what is the most profound for me.  Teaching these New Literacies should be at the forefront of our education.  It should be taught so that the digital world can be used for learning an inquiry.  Technology is only growing and to avoid it is not going to do our students justice.  We need to embrace it and use it.

One personal goal I am setting for myself is to teach these New Literacies as the beginning of the year.  Once these skills are taught, I can do so much more with digital learning.  One way I would accomplish this is to have each student earn a Passport to Digital Citizenship, (Ribble, 2008) as well as using the Quest model (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007) to teach and model how to use the Internet.

This course has allowed me to understand how online inquiry can be used in conjunction with district, state and national standards.  Students need to be taught to teach themselves, (Laureate Education Inc, 2009).  By teaching them to learn through inquiry they can do just that.  This also allows for peaked interest in learning and student choice with projects.  It can also allow for modified learning and meeting the individual learning needs of students. 

I am excited to teach my students how to read the web so we can use it to learn from each other, and others around the world. 

Reflection

Throughout this course I have been exposed to many different learning styles.  In week one, my learning style was a combination of many different ones all wrapped together.  I believed that learning is an active process in which information is built upon prior knowledge, as did Bruner. I also believe that all child learn at their own rate, when they are developmentally ready, (Piaget) with their very own learning style that works best for them, (Gardner), (Duffy & McDonald, 2008).   Now, my theory has changed somewhat.  Although I believe what I had in week one, I also think social learning is important as well.  I believe that technology needs to be used to meet the many needs of each student.  By using technology as a learning tool rather than a teaching tool, students will gain more. 

As a result of this new knowledge, I plan on using technology more as a learning tool rather than a teaching tool.  Although I used my SmartBoard daily, I could be making better use of it.  Through the creation of Power Point presentations that use images rather than words, students can better make connections to prior knowledge and recall information easier.  Students would be actively learning this way rather than passively reading.  I would also like to use the SmartBoard to have students construct and manipulate concept maps as they learn new information.  This will also allow for better recall.

I would like to use interactive technology on a more daily basis.  I plan on using more blogging in my teaching.  Many of my classroom parents are very supportive and I regularly give homework that requires the computer, so much of this can take place outside the classroom.  Blogging will require my students to use higher level thinking skills and learn to be digital communicators.  I also like the idea of using more web quests.  This supports the use of technology as well as social learning.  Both of which are very important in today's global society. This is going to require extra time in the computer lab which I will need to adjust for. 

I look forward to implementing these new technologies into my teaching and my students' learning.  I am anxious to see the results of its use.

References:

Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Teaching and learning with technology (3rd ed. pp. 2–35). Boston: Pearson.

Voice thread

Here is the link again.  Maybe this one will work.

http://voicethread.com/#u843352.b1035864.i5520716

Here is the link to my Voice Thread. I was becoming very frustrated with my power point and how it was uploading to the Voice Thread site. No matter what I did, the words were wrapping and some slides looked like a big blue box! Very strange! Hope you enjoy it!


http://ssomail.charter.net/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fvoicethread.com%252Fshare%252F1035864%252F

Social Learning

Collaborative Learning projects and Social Learning theories go hand in hand.  Social learning theorists believe that meaning is gained through interactions with others and the environment, (Orey, 2001).  By working collaboratively with others, students are constructing knowledge and learning to work in today's face paced and socially global society.  There are many web based activities that provide for cooperative learning.  What is the most exciting, in my opinion, is that the learning can extend past the walls of the school, and into the global community.  Students can collaborate with other students from around the world.  This is the modern day pen pal.  Students can reach out to cultural experts through the web to gain, gather, and provide information and knowledge.  Sites like ePALS and Key Pals International are great for this.  By far,the most exciting collaborative project for me to have be successful in my classroom would bbe the website creation.  I think this teaches so many skills while the students gain a vast amount of information on a specified topic. I love the fact this requries students to become an expert in an area.  With free and inexpensive tools this is easier than ever.  All these activities, and more, require students to work with each other, gain knowledge from each other, and learn life skills in the process.

References:

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Main_Page