Monitoring My GAME Plan

As I continue to work on my game plan, I must admit that things are running quite smoothly.  I have been slowly moving forward with the creation of the technology PLC in my district.  I may have to slow down my timetable for a countywide PLC as the process of getting permission and gaining the technology access that is needed has taken much longer than I had anticipated. 

As I work on Standard three, Indicator two I have not had to modify my plan at all.  My students are doing a nice job as they learn to find credible resources.  We have only done one exercise or lesson and then they worked individually after that.  I will check all of their references when the projects are turned in to assess their level of understanding.  As discussed in this week’s learning resources this type of assessment will be based off of the problem-based assessment (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009).  The authentic research that these students have been doing on the Presidential candidates mirrors the type of active citizenship outlined in the NYS Grade 12 curriculum and in real life.

This process has certainly reminded me that I am never too old to improve my teaching.  I have also become increasingly aware of how talented my students are in the use of creativity and technology.  The profiles that I am receiving are not only accurate, but contain elements of humor, sarcasm and art.  I often get bogged down in numbers and who is passing but with this process my viewpoint shifted and I really began to see my students as brilliant individuals capable of amazing things.

The biggest question that has arisen over the course of these GAME Plans has to do with my districts administration.  We have such tight constraints on our technology that I feel in some ways we are doing our students a disservice.  They are not able to interact with blogs or wikis.  I just feel that we can protect our students and we should, but I feel that my administration fails to see the benefits of technology.  I feel like creating an open mind in my district in terms of technology usage could be my next GAME plan!  For all of you who stop by my post in the next 24 hours, Happy Thanksgiving!

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

GAME Plan Progress

Last week I took some time to review the iste.nets standards for teachers.  After a reviewing each standard and the indicators that accompanied, it became obvious that I was comfortable with the job I was doing with a majority of the standards.  However, there were two that I decided that I needed to pay more attention to and work on.  Recognition is great, but now its time to figure out what I need to do personally to ensure that I improve on these areas.

The first standard that I felt needed attention was Standard 1 Indicator D.  Indicator D calls for teachers to model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.  I do believe that I collaborate well, but I don’t collaborate in virtual environments very well.  I checked and there is not a single Professional Learning Community in my district.  So what I did was send out a mass email looking for individuals who would be interested in becoming a part of the community and so far I have had about four express interest.  I also spoke with the IT coordinator and he is willing to work with us to create a virtual forum.  He admitted this was new for him but he is willing to try.  He did make one suggestion that I liked.  He reminded me that within our district there is an online chat option between the teachers.  He said in the early stages of the PLC’s development that could be an option.  I would like to have between seven and ten members in the PLC to start.  At this point I am going to need the district online chat option that works with our email and take it from there.  I would also like to in time create a Skype format where teachers can collaborate via the Internet with text, images, and sound.  I am looking forward to improving these methods, but this is an area that is so foreign to me that I just want to take it slow for now and get my feet wet.  I just feel that it is important for teachers who use technology to have some knowledge of their technology and a PLC can go a long way to creating a supportive culture for teachers who use technology (Laureate, 2009).

The second standard that I felt needed attention the second indicator that I would like to address falls under standard 3 entitled Model Digital Age Work and Learning which states that teachers model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate and use information resources to support research and learning.

            In order to improve in this area, I am going to have to use various methods of modeling along with the SMARTBoard and website evaluation forms.  I will also need the Computer Lab. This week it was pointed out that it is important to realize that students might come to the desired conclusions in a variety of ways (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009).   I will have a variety of forms that students can fill out to correctly evaluate a website.  I will present these forms in both paper form and digital form and allow the students to use the method that they prefer most.  For the purpose of learning to evaluate websites, I will allow the students to choose the topic they want to look into, it does not have to be government based. Instead, students will be free to choose whatever topic works for them as long as they are doing the required work.  Initially, I will demonstrate how to fill out a couple of the website evaluation forms in front of the whole class.  Then, after that those who are comfortable can try on their own, those who are still uncomfortable will be allowed to walk through the process one more time with me.  Finally, students will be turned loose on the computers to evaluate websites in the format and on the topic that they choose.  Please note that my classroom aid and myself will be constantly moving around the room answering questions and evaluating progress.  The next class these skills will be applied to the government project they are doing.  I feel that by taking this approach I will have inserted some flexibility in terms of options for the kids that will allow for learning of students of every ethnicity and ability level (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009).  I am very excited to put my plan to action as I feel the preparation is complete.

Resources:

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

International Society for Technology in Education. (2011). Nets for teachers. Retrieved

from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers.aspx

Laureate Education Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Ertmer, P., Program 3: Enriching

content area experiences with technology part one. Integrating Technology Across

the Content Areas [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Solution.

What Time is it? GAME TIME!

            This week I took some time to reflect iste.nets standards for teachers.  As I worked through the standards I found those that I was comfortable with and those that I was not so comfortable with.  When I finished with Standard 1 Indicator D, I could not help but revisit the description.

            Indicator D calls for teachers to model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.  Although I collaborate regularly, I don’t use technology to collaborate with teachers in my district and outside of my district.  This weeks learning resources pointed out that the best technology based projects are not listed on a Google search, but can be found through educators using programs such as Twitter to connect to teachers of the same content beyond the school (Laureate, 2009).  My GAME Plan for addressing this indicator is as follows:

Goal:  To broaden my collaborative comfort zone with colleagues with in my district as well as outside of my district in an effort to provide effective learning experiences.

Action:  In my district there are no professional learning committees at all, let alone one for increased teacher collaboration.  The first action I will take is to speak with the IT coordinator at our school to set up a PLC devoted to focusing teacher collaboration with an emphasis on technology usage in the classroom.  If that goes well I would like to also attempt to create a PLC that could use live streaming or video conferencing to connect the small rural county that I teach in.  Often there is only one subject teacher per school and to use the technology that we may incorporate in out classroom takes us one step closer to creating the virtual environments we would like for our kids.  This touches on the idea that effective teachers that use technology should be have some knowledge of their technology and it goes a long way to creating a supportive culture for teachers who use technology (Laureate, 2009).

Monitor:  Considering that this is something that is very new to my district and to the best of my knowledge the county.  I will be keeping a personal log as well as a log of our PLC meetings where I can not only record the events of the meeting but also reflect on what is working what isn’t and what can be improved.

Evaluate:  I will evaluate the effectiveness of the PLC by the responses of those involved as well as by implementing the projects and technology that the group explores and getting group feedback about the effectiveness of the technology and the developed projects.

After just recently completing a project where students used the web to research the personal and political backgrounds of the Presidential candidates, the second indicator that I would like to address is falls under the section entitled Model Digital Age Work and Learning which states that teachers model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate and use information resources to support research and learning.

Goal: To model the correct use of digital tools to efficiently locate and evaluate credible information through online research.

Action:  Model the proper ways to conduct online inquiry so that the best information is located in a timely fashion.  The students will watch me model that and then they will have guided practice in the same field prior to being turned loose for independent research.  I will also model the website evaluation worksheet as we fill the sheet in as a class via the SMARTboard.  We will discuss what credible URLs look like and practice together evaluating a website of my choice.  When I feel that the class is ready to be turned loose, they will have an opportunity to apply the strategies that I have modeled in their personal research.

Monitor:  As the students are completing these tasks, I will be monitoring the questions being asked, body language and evaluating their answers to questions to see if they truly understand the strategies and the level of work that is expected of them.  If I feel through my evaluation that they are able to try I will turn them loose.  If the whole class is lost we will do more guided practice as a group.  Finally, if some in the group are ready to start and others aren’t it will be no problem to take more time with that small group and provide the extra instruction that those students require.

Evaluation:  I mentioned above that some of the evaluation might take place while I am monitoring, that evaluation is informal.  I will be collecting the website evaluation worksheet as a final checkpoint for understanding.  If all is well then it is time to move on, if the students struggle I know that I need to reteach.

            The course text informs us that simply using technology does not promote creative thinking skill or engage students (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009).  But if used in a calculated manner it is blatantly obvious that technology can create effective lessons and teachers who foster critical and creative thinking among their students.

Resources:

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

International Society for Technology in Education. (2011). Nets for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers.aspx

Laureate Education Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Ertmer, P., Program 3: Enriching content area experiences with technology part one. Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Solution.

Laureate Education Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Ertmer, P., Program 3: Enriching content area experiences with technology part two. Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas [Educational Video]. Los Angeles: Solution.