VoiceThread on CMS(Course Managment Systems)

http://voicethread.com/share/2159699/

Check out my link above to a new voicethread I created about online learning.  Please comment and let me know your opinions.

Reflection of GAME Plan and Course

To start,  working with the GAME Plan while giving and getting feedback from others through the blogs allowed me to learn a lot about how technology could be used and is being used to reach students on a level that should really prepare them for the future.  I discovered new links, teaching technology strategies as well as what standards are out there for using technology in the classroom.  I found the standards to be interesting because they are mostly unnoticed or not brought up in my district or those of some of my classmates.  It is striking to see the varying levels of technology integration across the country and globally. 

Moving forward I would like to continue to monitor the GAME Plan that I set up for myself.  The goals that I choose are not short-term even though I have started to make immediate progress.  This is the reason why I choose this major.  I am eager to continue to explore what is out there in regards to technology in education.  Not only did the GAME Plan allow me to set a goal, but discussion and learning allows me to begin to apply that new found knowledge.  Finding out the potential growth is one thing, but attempting to grow through practice is another.

Game Plan Process

To me there are many parallels between the NETS-S and the NETS-T.  Skills such as collaboration, citizenship, research, and problem solving continue to repeat throughout the forums of technology and education both separately and as a mutual concept.  The best part about attempting to become proficient in any of the desired skills I mentioned, is that technology assists at every turn.  It is not difficult to use technology to teach collaboration.  It is not difficult to explain citizenship, by using technology and internet use as authentic examples.  Problem solving and research are made faster and more efficient with technology that is properly used.  So what about developing these skills through the development of a GAME plan?

The GAME plan process as a whole works well because a goal is set and then monitored for achievement, and reflected upon.  What better way to show students that goals are achievable than to show them the GAME plan process and instill how progress can be created just by thought and simple actions.  Maybe once you have some knowledge of your students in the beginning of a school year, you could have the students create their own GAME plan that addresses an important skill for future education or the workplace.  Then as the year progresses and you implement technology into the curriculum there can be check points where the students themselves evaluate their progress with their GAME plan.  They might even adjust their goals, much like we did in this course.  I am not sure what this would look like as far as how to introduce this to the students, or how exactly this might be assessed.  However, having the students monitor themselves throughout the year with something that isn’t a grade on a report card, could be more authentic and eye-opening than anything they have previously experienced.

Contining the GAME Plan evaluation

After another week of implementing my GAME plan I am starting to realize the enormous amount of information and resources out there on this never-ending internet.  This week I have been planning for changes to my instruction not only for next school year but the rest of April and May.  In doing so, I became fascinated by how often I find useful sites and possibilities to expand lessons.  It verges on overwhelming and certainly forces me to step back and write down the ideas that start swirling through my head.  After an online search and numerous ideas, if you start conversing with a colleague your mind will really run rampant and my excitement rises.  Last week technology obstacles were many, and this week I am bubbling with possibilities.  The pendulum swings of a year where technology has been placed on my lap have been interesting to say the least. 

However, heading into mid April I feel like I couldn’t possibly go back to what I had before.  My goals moving forward remain the same.  I need to continue to learn, explore, experiment and reflect with different strategies of using technology to teach my curriculum and how to be a 21st century learner.  Not only do my students need to learn, but I need to grow with them.  If I had to assign a new goal, it would be to use technology more efficiently in the future as well as to push for my district to step up the level of infrastructure in the building so that we a lack of network capability is not holding us back anymore.  I also, would love more professional development on technology use, so that the ideas and bubbling excitement do not diminish or fade away.

GAME plan Wk 5

Implementing technology this week really hit a snag.  Our buildings network has been inconsistent to put it nicely and I have had four of the laptops in my room completely fail to logon to the network or load Windows.  I put in a technology work request and I am sure they will be fixed soon, but it is causing frustration for students who want to work, and frustration for me, because as much as I wanted computers in the room, it has been a rough learning process as well.  Then to top it off, just today I discovered that a student in my first period class decided to quietly scramble all of the keys on the keyboard.  These are the small netbook computers from Dell with very thin keys, so on the bright side he has excellent dexterity.  Based on these speed bumps along the way, I would say that progress towards my GAME plan is moving along since part of that plan is that I continue to learn as an educator. This is not what I had in mind when I made that choice, however I have to admit it is helping me understand all aspects of using technology in a classroom.   

Nevertheless, the students are starting to grasp my stance on paying attention to what they read on the internet.  As a class we have been having discussions about postings in reference to the nuclear crisis going on in Japan.  The students have been able to see how the points of view of authors as well as emotions from random public postings can be invalid and or non factual.  It is a start and their minds are thinking, which is exactly what I want.  Now the question is, how can I build on the momentum?

GAME Plan Progress Cont.

As a recap, my GAME plan centered around teaching my students citizenship and responsiblity when using online technology, while also ensuring that I continue to learn and grow in the areas of technology and its use in education.  Just last week I had felt good about the plan that I had set up and the path I had chosen to accomplish it.  The GAME plan made sense, was achievable and would help both my teaching abilities and my students opportunities to learn. 

This past week I had further explored possible resources for my students to use in order to evaluate websites for validity and usefulness.  I successfully located a two page worksheet developed by another teacher and technology leader who had far more knowledge on this subject than I did and was nice enough to share her creations with others.  I implemented the worksheet and just finished assessing the students on their findings.  After analysis, there is an apparent diversity of internet and computer knowledge that I had read and learned about, but not fully witnessed until this assignment.  I had some students who knew what a web browser such as Internet Explorer was and others who thought Google was the internet.  I also found that some students fully understood my methods and objectives and others filled out the worksheet without understanding the message of being a critical observer. 

Therefore, moving forward with my plan I will have to continue to modify my methods and strategies of teaching internet and technology use.  Modeling, discussion and reflection are going to need to increase not only for my students but for my own learning as well.  I have discovered that this goal require more work and deeper thought than I might have originally imagined.  I am left wondering how many resources are  to help guide a teacher through teaching such skills.  I am going to continue my search as well as implementing technology in way that promotes the students thoughts about how it can be appropriately used.

Acting on My GAME Plan

As I stated in my last post, I want to do more with increasing citizenship and responsibility when it comes to using technology while also continuing to stay abreast of changes in technology and how it is being used in education.  On one side of the coin I am using and teaching the appropriate use of technology to students and on the other side I am learning on my own. 

Therefore, I will need to continue to effectively use technology in my classroom while also reading, conversing and experimenting with other technology possibilities that may enhance instruction.  When using technology with classroom instruction I will need to impress upon students how it should be used effectively and in what ways technology can cause issues.  I want to teach students that just like dealing with different people and scenarios you have to adapt to your surroundings, consequently when working with the internet for example there are academic applications and personal or social applications.  To assist with this I have already made the evaluation of websites an essential part to any research assignment.  We as a class had discussions before and during the research activity about how to ensure that the information you find is reputable. 

In the realm of learning on my own I feel that at the present moment this piece of the GAME plan is easy.  As I stated in my last post, I am an active student at the moment, exploring technology in education from many angles.  What this has done to help me down the road is to open up avenues and doors that lead to future learning potential.  I am now aware of teacher blogs, text and other resources that can be accessible even after I have graduated.  The most important part for moving forward is to actually explore and use these resources not only later, but right now.  Not to mention the biggest piece of the GAME plan and that is to evaluate progress in meeting my goals.

Developing my Personal Game Plan

After taking a look at International Society for Technology in Education and their standards for teachers I have settled on two particular areas that I would like to improve on.  If I am going to become completely proficient in technology in education I need to build confidence by trying things that I have yet to tackle.  One standard that I would really like to get better at, is promoting digital citizenship and responsibility.  I have always felt that these were skills and beliefs that I normally would try to instill in my students, yet doing it with technology is something new.  With the large influx of social networking, how people are communicating is changing rapidly and I wonder if our responsibility and citizenship are being somewhat lost. 

Another standard that I would like to improve involves professional growth.  Right now I am learning a lot because I am a student, however after learning a lot about technologies possibilities in education and how to start applying that knowledge, I want to ensure that I stay informed and up to date.  Therefore, it will be necessary for me to continue to educate myself moving forward as well as attempting and reflecting on lessons where technology is infused. 

The monitoring of my progress should be documented so that I can refer back to what I have discovered each and every year.  Just like any other lesson, reflection and notes will assist in ensuring that I reach my goals.  Still, I will need to also refer back to the standards for technology and how they have changed.  I have a strong feeling that technology in education will change greatly over the next few years as school systems try to catch up with what is needed for our students.

My First Screencast

This is my screencast of me evaluating a website on stickbugs. 

http://www.screencast.com/users/JBeckett22/folders/Jing/media/00477b82-ea5e-47e8-b994-571304e13a84

Reflection on Bridging Learning Course

Looking back at my personal learning theory that I had written about in the first week of my graduate course most of what I said remains concrete.  However, with the additional knowledge of technology tools and how they can be incorporated into different learning theories, there is a need for amendment.  I originally stated, if the student is interested, motivated or emotionally impacted by what we are doing in the room then they are likely to learn new concepts.  Therefore, the only way I can logically expect learning to take place is to try as hard as I possibly can to make what we do exciting and relevant to their lives and when a lesson looks like it is doing neither of these two things resort to humor and entertainment as a way to motivate them through their emotions, to digest it anyway.  Technology allows for me to take this idea to a new level.  If I properly plan to implement different types of technology then I can more easily relate content to their lives and boost  by allowing for greater resources that more directly correlate with their personal experiences. 

Two tools that I really enjoyed working with and have already begun to use are VoiceThread and online simulations.  VoiceThread has many resources that made the students very interested in working on their projects as well as presenting them.  Online simulations have proven to be a valuable tool to go hand in hand with a lab experiment.  The simulations help the students to get a new perspective of the concept as well as to quickly test several scenarios in one class period. 

Moving forward my goals are to continue to develop strategies for implementing technology as often and effectively as possible and to find ways to promote the use of technology for instruction throughout the district in which I work.  I have already started planting seeds during committee meetings and I am part of a cohort that has lap top carts in the classroom full-time.  This course really pulled together all that I had learned from each course that I have taken thus far.  I feel more prepared to use technology in the classroom, than I ever have before.  It is no longer only a belief that it should be done, but a reality for my students ever week of the school year.