My GAME plan progress

I have encountered some difficulties in progressing with my GAME plan. Students in a number of my classes have related to my that they do not have access to computers, e-mail addresses or their own cell phones outside of school. Students have difficulty coming up with a plan when they are unfamiliar with the technology. While the "I can" statements we are focusing our plans on are the state standards written in student friendly terms, many students are unfamiliar with these standards and find little relevance in their own education. I may be achieving "curriculum alignment" as defined in Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach but I am not creating relevance to the students.

My second concern is with a lack of parent interest/participation to this point. I have received a few e-mail addresses from parents, but these are adults that are working very long hours or more than one job. The parents have said they would do what they could, but introducing another item (even a fast technology) into their already overloaded schedules has proven less than fruitful.

I have been successful in tracking the use of our laptop cart for the building. Teachers are starting to create their own Delicious.com accounts to ease students into locating teacher reference sites quickly and accessing the sites used in class at home or at the public library.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Carrying out my GAME plan

In reviewing my GAME plan, I recognize there are a number of additional resources and information that I need to collect. It is important that I survey all my students to find out what technologies students have access to at home and personally. I also need to create a list of all emails of students and parents. As far as steps I have taken, I was at a workshop today discussing and planning to implement lessons with relevance to student learning. We discussed using concept mapping to help make student connections. We also explored and shared math and science websites to include games and journaling strategies into our existing curriculum. I have set up a Wiki for use in class, but do not plan on introducing this to students until after the break. Finally I would like to expand my current technology tracking system to look at possible links to student growth and achievement.

Developing a personal GAME plan

In reviewing the ISTE website and examining the NETS-T, I felt there were three standards that I would like to work to improve in my own instruction.

The first standard that I would like to include is 1b, "engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources." It is important that students engage in activities and learning experiences that have relevance to their own lives. At least once a week students will brainstorm with the teacher ways to implement the knowledge level skills we address in our "I can" statements focused on each state grade level indicator. Included in these lists will be uses for cell phones, ipods and computers that students have access to outside the classroom walls. Explore the viability of each option presented and plan to implement at least one idea a month with the help of student planning. Students will communicate with the teacher through blog or email problems, concerns and positive learning moments as the plan progresses. Final evaluations will be completed by students and teacher for reflection on changes to be made before the next class meeting.

The second to be included is 3b, "collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation." I was intrigued by the GAME plan presented in the text for webconferencing. It is difficult to collaborate with students, parents and community members in the same location at any common time. By using webconferencing and the use of wikis collaboration could be possible without bringing all parties together in a physical sense. First, I must learn how to use webconferencing and wikis effectively with a small group of individuals that are familiar with the terms and the technology. Next plan to "meet" to disseminate information about students on a regular basis, (monthly). To monitor and evaluate progress there must be some sense of the number of possible participants and the number of actual participants. The question will need to be address, "why are some adults participating and others are not?"

Finally I would like to work with 4b, "address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies and providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources." My goal with this standard is to track how often each student gets to use a laptop, elmo, mimio, or digital camera. Where there appears to be a gap or discrepancy, analyse what might be the cause of such difference. Where appilcable I would like to recommend to cooperating teachers that technology usage be increased in their homerooms in any content area. I would like to continue to observe fellow educators using learner-centered lessons, to best adapt these to my own best practice.

References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

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

EDUC 6712 - Reflection (week 8)

The most striking revelation I had about teaching the 21st century literacy skills was that this was a much greater task than just learning how to read the web. Students must have the basic reading skills to attempt understanding in an enormous collaborative like the Internet. Communication and synthesizing were necessary in order to effectively and efficiently understand and utilize all the information available to students with just a few keystrokes. This is a much more complex task than simply presenting content, practicing and testing to see what the students have retained. As the course progressed, it was clear that these are skills that as a teacher I was going to need to get up to speed with as well. As I took what I was learning back to the classrooms I serve, I was delighted that students were excited and wanted to apply what they had learned outside my science class. "To truly determine whether your students have internalized new strategies for reading and learning on the Web, be on the lookout for evidence of generalization and transfer" (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007, p.280).

Many of the things I learned from this course I took back and immediately used/taught in my classroom. The day after I realized I didn't know as much as I thought I did about search engines, I took my new knowledge back to a fifth grade class. I explained what I had learned about Google not being the only way to search. We did an example of a search first with Google, then with altavista.com using a host command to narrow the search to edu urls. The students were impresses with the difference it made. We also discussed how to determine if a website was a good source for reliable information. Two of the tools I passed on to the students were www.archive.org and whois.com. These were both new sites to me and we discussed how useful it could be to see former versions of a site or the owner/persons responsible for the content.

There are a number of professional development goals I would like to pursue, building upon my learning from this class. Prior to this class I had little experience with inquiry-based projects. I would like to learn how to effectively implement more of these in the near future. I would also like to incorporate pod casts into every class I work with, from kindergarten to fifth grade. In the process I hope to learn and share with coworkers who are leery of using this technology. Finally, I have already started discussing and modeling how we as teachers should be modeling ethical use of technology. It did not occur to me until this class how often I use something some one else has created without giving it public credit. Simply not stating it is my own work is not enough. I have started to label or credit every picture, graph or piece or information I use on a worksheet or handout. Students need to see ethical behavior if they are going to behave ethically