Let's Get This Party Started!

This week, we were asked to continue our GAME plan by answering some simple questions that will better help focus our goals. Below you will find the questions and my replies:

•What resources will you need to carry out your plan (video, reading, experts or colleagues, etc)?
For my first goal - being more responsible with online citations - I plan to use a works cited generator such as Bibme.org, which automatically generates a reference in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian formats. The ease of using this site will help me stay on track and remember to add citations to any online lesson I prepare.

The other goal I set for myself was to extend my professional development. As I said previously, I am attending Promethean's Train the Trainer series in a couple of weeks. A fellow teacher will be attending this with me, so we will be able to hold each other accountable. We have also begun to speak with our administrators about holding our own in-services at our school for next year. I will also remain up-to-date with all things Promethean by making use of Promethean Planet's forum where teachers from all over the world come together to help each other.

•What additional information do you need?
As far as being more responsible with my online citations, I do not believe I will need any additional information. With the professional development aspect, I will obviously need to attend the training to gain more information about training other teachers to use the Promethean boards with ease.

•What steps have you been able to take so far?
So far, I have searched the Internet to find an easy way to make sure I can be able to cite online sources correctly. There are several citation generators available, so I know that if I am not happy with the one I have chosen that I can change to another. I have also begun to plan in-service opportunities with the other teacher who is also attending the Promethean training with me. We are hoping to be able to offer monthly workshops in order to help teachers come up with new ideas and flipcharts to use.


References:
ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) (2008). The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-T) and PErformance Indicatiors for TEachers. retrieved from http://www.iste.o-Trg/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

What's YOUR GAME Plan?

As any good athlete knows, you must develop a GAME plan. No matter which team or what position you play, there should always be a way to monitor your progress and anticipate your next step. Educators are no different. In my classroom, I am constantly setting goals and expectations for my students and monitoring their progress. As a teacher, I should model those actions as well.

After looking at the ISTE website and looking at the five NETS-T performance standards, I have chosen the following two on which to work: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility and Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership.

In order to strengthen my confidence to be able to Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility I will be more aware of citing digital sources when I use a source from the Internet in a lesson. I will make sure to point this out to my students each time I use a source and explain how important it is to give proper credit where it is due. In order to evaluate my progress, I will look back at my digital presentations from time to time to ensure I have given the proper credit.

I also plan to set up a schedule for my students to use the computers. I will monitor this by keeping a record of scheduled days in the rotation of my students. Each student will sign in and out of their computer with a log that will be placed next to their station. I will evaluate the effectiveness of this by looking at the log and making modifications for time/effort spent with those students who I feel need it.

For my second standard, Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership, I am planning to attend Promethean's Train the Trainer five-part ActivInstruction series. During this week, I will be learning ways in which to teach other educators in my school as well as in my county to use Promethean's technology. I plan to hold and instruct professional development opportunities within the county and will monitor my progress by having the attendees provide feedback of the course through a survey. From the feedback I receive, I will then evaluate what needs to be changed or modified within my instruction in order to facilitate a better understanding of Promethean's technology. I will extend my learning by the use of Promethean's online forum in order to collaborate with other trainers and teachers using the software. This will connect me to others in different states and countries and provide me with the opportunity to correlate ideas in which I had not thought of before. This is probably the standard I most excited about and will have no problem staying on top of my GAME plan!

As I stated before, It is important for educators to create a GAME plan for their students as well as themselves. If we do not constantly set goals, take action, monitor, and evaluate the goals set forth, we cannot grow as teachers and therefore our students will not receive the best education possible.

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.

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) (2008). The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-T) and PErformance Indicatiors for TEachers. retrieved from http://www.iste.o-Trg/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/For Teachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

We're Supposed to Look Up WHAT?!

The most striking revelation I have had while teaching my students during this course is that many of them did not know how to correctly identify legitimate information on a web site. I did the “bogus” website activity with my students and thought surely that if a product or topic sounded too good or too silly to be true, they would recognize that! However, that was definitely NOT the case. I have also learned that my students would rather have the information placed in their hands than to actually have to go out and search for it. This goes back to many years of having this practice done for them. Hopefully, I am helping break this habit by encouraging my students to find their own information and evaluate it correctly.

The knowledge and experience I have gained in this course will influence my teaching by having me re-evaluate the information I ask my students to find. Many times I often ask for information that is very cut and dry. In the future, I would like to direct my lessons more towards my students identifying the questions and information on their own terms. That way, they synthesize the information more clearly because they have been in it since the beginning.

One professional development goal I have for the future is to attend a Promethean workshop this summer. The use of Promethean boards has proven to raise test scores with consistent use. By engaging my students with lessons on the Promethean board and being able to fully construct lessons that help the students build and retain the information presented, I believe they will begin a whole new journey towards the proficiency of new literacy skills.

Reflections

At the begining of this course, I said I most closely related to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences and I still believe this to be true. While we have learned about several different learning theories, I still think students have distinct ways they learn. Therefore, I have chosen not to modify my theory of learning.

An immediate change I have already made in my classroom was the implementation of voice threads. My students were able to successfully create and use the voice thread application on an assignment about winter holidays.

Two technology tools I would like to implement in the future would be virtual field trips and the use of Kidspiration, which is a program to help students create concept maps. Both of these will help students create and organize their thoughts in order to use them more successfully in their studies.

A long term goal I am making will be to integrate the use of Promethean boards in my classroom. Just before Christmas, we received word that our school will be receiving them through the stimulus monies. We will also receive several hours of training specifically for these boards and I am also trying to convince my principal to send me to Atlanta to become a certified trainer on the Promethean Boards. This technology will completely change not only the way my students will be learning, but the way I plan and construct my lessons. I think it will be a win/win situation for everyone involved!

The other long-term goal I want to make is by using some sort of student-lead technology each week in my classroom. I would like for the students to either blog to each other or create a voice thread about a topic we are studying at the time. This will provide the students an opportunity to build a classroom relationship as well as providing an opportunity for the students to jigsaw their information. I think both of these long term goals will prove to be successful strategies in the classroom!

Voice Thread

lease take a look at my voice thread & leave a comment!
http://voicethread.com/share/784087/

"It's Shake N' Bake and I Helped!"

I believe that this week's collaborative resources suggested in the book Using Technology With Classroom Instruction that Works are very valuable to the cooperative learning theory. I was really impressed with the Revolution game! My class is actually getting ready to discuss the American Revolution and I think this would be a wonderful way to impress upon the students the decisions everyone involved had to make. I also love that each person in my class can take on a character and play each other interactively.

I was also impressed with Dr. Orey's suggestion of Jigsaw learning. I explored the Jigsaw.org website this afternoon and while it was not interactive as I expected, it did give some great ideas of incorporating social learning into a classroom. This is really nothing new to experienced teachers. In fact, I suggested it to my student teacher for next week's vocabulary lesson. She thought it was a really cool idea!

I love that kids love working together and learning from each other. I believe if the teacher sets it up properly on the front end, there shouldn't be too many problems once the students get started. It is a great way to learn and have fun!

Reflection

Thanks for your comments everyone! Again, I believe all three of these methods could be very effective, but it depends on the teacher's comfort level. Jennifer, I know what you mean about not being able to use these with your class this year. Some years you have a class that can handle anything, while other years you get a class where you think you are lucky when they can correctly write their name on their paper!! lol