Monitoring my GAMEPlan progress!

After I established a set of goals for instituting technology into my teaching practice I needed to take some actions to fulfill those goals. Two of the main actions I chose to initiate in my classrooms were to increase the number of times my students visited the computer labs, and to encourage home use with the implementation of a class blog.

Concerning my first goal, I have definitely been able to increase the number of visits my students have made to the computer labs. The major obstacles I have met so far have occurred because I teach a subject (academically gifted) that our district feels is not as important as conducting standardized tests. The huge barrage of fall testing has disrupted the attendance of my classes and thrown off my calendar. I am also a traveling teacher, who is at a different elementary school each day of the week, which can also make it hard to schedule computer lab time. Despite this, I have made an effort to get my classes into the lab as much as possible.

My second goal was to set up a class blog and encourage my students to use it as much as possible. I have had mixed success in this endeavor. The main obstacle I have met with this goal is the socioeconomic discrepancy across my district. While I have 100 percent home access to the internet in some schools, it may be as low as 40 percent at other schools. This is a topic we have talked about repeatedly in this course, how do you adapt a lesson or classroom goal to accommodate differentiating students? I have had much difficulty finding a viable solution to this problem.

Despite these problems, I still believe I can implement the actions part of my GAME Plan and follow them up with productive monitoring and evaluation.

My GAME plan:

I have just reviewed the National Educational Technology Standards from the International Society for Technology in Education. and I am thinking about which of these standards I will be focusing on strengthening first. I really think my areas of weakness are "Digital Citizenship" and "Communication and Collaboration". I find them to be important but I have not dedicated as much time to them as I should have been doing. I think that having more digital interaction is critical for both of these areas.

Goals: I hope to increase the students' basic toolbox of basic skills in technology while also inspiring a sense of creativity and exploration in problem solving.

Action: I am going to make sure that my students have regular access to the computer labs and centers, as well as encourage home use of the computer through posted entries on my blog and eventually my students' glogs. Glogs.com/edu is like a private social networking system for students.

Monitering: I can monitor the students' understanding of the processes of digital literacy through my interactions with them on the Glog.

Evaluate: My students are keeping a notebook including a KWHL chart which outlines the research process for them and requires them to record references, processes, and thinking.
My main course of action for improving my students' proficiency in thinking critically and processing information in a complete and creative manner- is to "just do it". Get them started in the basics of technology with a sense of urgency while expanding their ability to analyze information. I am devoting time weekly for computer use, taking advantage of my computer lab access to the fullest.


Laureate Education Inc. (2009). “Enriching Learning Experiences with Technology.” Baltimore, MD: Laureate Education Inc.

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

Gem of a site:

http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/

I am completing my coursework for my class "Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom". Informational Literacy is critical in our Information Age and includes the ability to formulate problems, access information, and use the information responsibly, accurately, and creatively. This class has really honed in on teaching us to help children to formulate their own deep questions, seek out and analyze information from a variety of sources, and transform that information into presentations in a variety of mediums.
The most striking revelation that I have had in this course is that the goal of this kind of inquiry learning is to help students internalize the process of discovery and creation.
I plan to utilize many of the experiences in my future planning and teaching. Going forward into this year and beyond, I plan to use the framework of deep questioning, critical evaluation of a multitude of resources, and an open-ended approach to sharing knowledge.
One professional development goal that I would like to pursue is to continue to learn and share new tools for students to use in generating and sharing their content. Specific goals for my students include increasing reading for information skills, critical thinking, and a sense of independence and confidence in finding multiple quality materials to increase knowledge.
I plan to use my inquiry learning unit based on the big idea of "structures" to carefully and thoroughly walk the students through the important steps of inquiry. The most important thing I have garnered through this class is that I as a teacher have to jump in and immediately get started in helping students become more proficient. Students have so much to learn, I have a new sense of urgency to get the information literacy skills in place so that students can begin to blossom in this important skill as a life-long learner. I plan to integrate information literacy in all content areas on a very regular basis. I am fortunate to be able to have the technological support and access to technological tools in my district to make this a reality.

Save the Pacific NorthWest Tree Octopus!

Screencasts and videos online

Our assignment was to evaluate a variety of hoax websites designed to illustrate that you can not always believe what you see, read or hear- especially on the internet. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. You might not believe it to hear it- but that is actually the sixth take of this video. I can see great applications for this for online schools.

Technology Course Reflection

At the beginning of the course, we established a personal theory of learning. I believe the goal of this assignment was to create a starting point for our journey into the use of technology in the classroom. Over the weeks, we revisited many of the instructional strategies used by educators over the past decades. Most of these strategies were reviewed, since we had been using them in the classroom before. However, with the review of each strategy, we tried to introduce an element of technology.
My initial theory of learning stated that students benefit from a wide variety of instructional methods. As I progressed through the course, this belief was reinforced through discussions and applications about behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Each method reminded me of some of the things I already did in the classroom, and some of the things I probably should start doing more of in the classroom.
I don’t think there really has been much of a shift in my theory of learning since the start of the class. Instead, I think I have recognized the importance of shifting the responsibility for the learning away from the teacher and toward the student. I understood this before, but I have really tried to shift from just delivering a safe version of active learning through technology to implementing it into my instruction. One example of this shift applies to the use of PowerPoints in class. Before this class, I would try my best to make PowerPoints interactive, but I was still the one in front of the class, and my students were still the ones in their seats. One of the activities I planned around the constructivism lesson was for the students to create their own PowerPoint slides and
share them with the rest of the class. While I recognized the need to be progressive when implementing technology into my instruction, I never really applied it before this activity.
The two technology tools I would like to use with my students in the future are the VoiceThread community and the Virtual field trip. I was very excited to learn about the VoiceThread application. I plan to use this application to enhance my lesson plans by making them more interactive. Most of the lessons I teach that include a written assessment can easily be replaced by a shared, classroom review that would allow the students to show off their work, and take a more active role in their learning. In addition, I think the application will be a good way to provide alternative methods of assessment for students, individually, or in a group. Another fantastic use of technology I was introduced to during this course was the virtual field trip. I was a little bit surprised to discover that the virtual field trip was actually fun and interesting for me, the teacher. I was very interested in following along the field trip as I investigated which ones I would use in my class. I look forward to finding the time to create my own virtual field trips as well, ones that I can manipulate and fine tune to match my curriculum.
Some changes I would like to make to my instructional practice would simply be to continue expanding my repertoire of technology tools. Although it is important to make sure you are adhering to effective and varied instructional methods, I believe that at this point in my career, I have gained a relatively strong understanding of differentiating instruction. The area I hope to focus on in the future would be connecting new uses of technology to each lesson I create. In order to accomplish this goal, I intend to investigate as many new forms of technology as I can. In addition, I intend to network

with other teachers in my school and over the internet, with the hope that I will discover a variety of new ways to use technology in the classroom.

Recycling