Close of Course 8

It is hard to believe it, but I’m at the end of another course towards my masters. Eight down and two more to go! Each course so far has left me not only feeling motivated to make leaps into the 21st century with my students, but has helped give me the confidence in knowing that I can bring my students into the 21st century.

What this particular course, the focus was mostly on creating GAME plans that allow you to first see what goals need to be achieved, then how to map out the plan to achieve them, and finally, forcing you to make a conscious effort to keep up on the progress of the goals through evaluation and reflection.



The biggest adjustment that I think I will be making to my teaching with this information is creating plans for myself and with my students that clearly lay out what needs to be learned, what they want to learn and improve on, and just how to go about doing it. Sometimes it is easy to get that tunnel vision where you are concentrating on just one particular skill, that you forget to take a step back and look at why that skills is important and what knowing it help you achieve in the big picture of things. So by keeping some of the goals in the game plans broad, I think it will cause myself and my students to see more of the big picture.

Magan

Benefits of a GAME Plan

So how effective was having a GAME plan? I think the biggest advantage about actually setting up a GAME plan, has been the fact that it really makes you think about the details and holds you accountable for them as long as you keep monitoring and reflecting on your progress. After I first developed my plan, I looked ahead to future assignments for this particular course and saw that we were to be reflecting on our GAME plan every single week. My first instinct was a bit of an eye roll, because I thought this would get extremely redundant reflecting on the same thing for six weeks. However, I have to now admit that it was actually very beneficial to do this because it motivated me to make sure I was actually making changes and working toward my goal every single week. This got me to thinking that if I had my students set up their own GAME plan for content standards throughout the school year, they would be made extremely aware of what it was exactly that they were working towards. My thinking is that if for each new unit in a subject area, I would help students create a GAME plan to achieve those objects. Then not only is the teacher responsible for teaching the material, but it also really helps to hold the students accountable for their own learning. Obviously for the younger grade levels, there will be a lot of assistance in creating these GAME plans, and I think it would be more beneficial to create a class plan rather than individual student plans. What do you think? I am also leaning towards incorporating the NETS-S right into the curriculum plans because then students and myself would have a better chance of finding ways to intertwine the curriculum standards with the technology standards.

GAME Plan Continued

Well it’s been six weeks now since I have created my GAME plan. My original goal was to expose students to solving real-world problems using technology while using professionalism and responsibility of their use on the web and other technology tools. I have to say, that in just these pas six weeks I am very happy with the progress that I have made toward this goal. While I started out trying to find one large project that would achieve this goal, I have come to realize over the last week that one project, no matter how significant it is or now well it relates to the real world, is not enough. In order to achieve this goal, I have to be consistently involving students in solving real-world problems, and constantly modeling and expecting them to use technology responsibly and professionally. By creating an interactive whiteboard in my classroom has made a world of difference! I can show students first hand how I go about searching and selecting quality video resources on the internet, how I give them each resource credit, and I can use countless flipchart type materials on the board that allow students to interact with real world situations on a daily basis.

Since I’m feeling pretty confident in my current goal, I am extending my NETS based goal to include using technology to help inspire creativity in my students. There is no doubt that using technology in my classroom has inspired student learning, but I still would like to see my students pulling out more creativity.

To achieve this goal I will certainly start where I started my last goal: turning to my colleague for advice and suggestions. With various education blogs, forums, and my own teaching staff, there are endless amounts of resources out there to get started. I think for this goal it is also important to allow as much student freedom as possible. So…now starts the process of improvement all over again!

Magan

GAME Plan Update

So far my GAME plan is coming along quite well. It’s funny how when you start out looking to achieve one specific things, so many other things arise along the path that end up achieving that you never even dreamed of! In my previous post I mentioned that I had taken my first step to overcoming the problem of limited access to the school’s interactive whiteboard, by creating my own inexpensive board in my classroom. After more educators caught wind of what I had done, I have now been asked to present the creation process along with what types of things can be done on this valuable tool at my district’s professional development day. I find this a great honor because a big part of our technology standards rely on sharing information and knowledge with others. Now I am not only able to use information I have found from other resources, but now I am able to help pass this information along to other educators.

I do not feel that I need to make any adjustments to my plan this week. Another step in the right direction I have made over this past week was that I have now made the decision about what my students will create their digital storybooks about, and how it will allow them to integrate our core curriculum in with solving real-world problems. On my pervious post, Erin Beauvais had a wonderful suggestion that I have students select different children’s books and take the underlying lesson taught in the book and use that for real-world lessons that impact the student’s lives each and every day. I love this idea and cannot wait for my students to get started with this project in the next couple weeks. My plan is to have students broken up into groups of four and select from a variety of children’s book that they want to write about and elaborate on. Students will then use the book’s lesson to think of ways they can help carry out that same lesson in their own lives. Obviously this will be kept at a pretty basic level since these are 1st graders, but I really think they would get excited about this project and take a lot out of it.

Magan

Reflect and Revise

Well another week as gone by which means it is time to take a closer look at how I am progressing with my GAME plan.

This week I was able to overcome a couple of significant barriers that would potentially get in the way of achieving my plan. My school unfortunately has very limited access to technology in our classrooms so even though I had big plans to get my students making digital storybooks and viewing a large variety of United Streaming videos that tie into our curriculum, it does get difficult to schedule ample times in our schools shared computer lab. So after doing some research to see what others have done to break though this very same barrier, I came across an excellent substation for the expensive smartboards that all of the teachers in our school wish for on a daily basis. Using johnnylee.net as a resource, I was able to build my own interactive whiteboard in my classroom for less than $70. Since this was about $1500 cheaper than the actual Promethean Boards themselves, our principal has agreed to help get all the teachers in our building funding for this project! My students can now have unlimited access to this useful tool so they can share, edit, view videos online, all while working hands on.

After seeing how much time my GAME my game plan is taking at this point, I have decided to modify it a little bit and take things one step at a time. Originally I wanted to set up a digital portfolio online of all the student artifacts that were created over the years. Now I have decided to just keep my basic digital file folder of all student material and notes from the lesson. I do still hope to create a digital portfolio that can be shared with teachers, parents, and students, but at this time, I would like to focus on the creation of the actual lessons, and then later on, work on getting them out there to the world.

The main question that I am still pondering over is what real-world scenario I want my 1st graders to create digital storybooks about. I want a topic that excites them, pulls out their creativity, but also does not make them feel overwhelmed. Any good suggestions out there? I would love to hear them!

Magan

GAME Plan Update

On a continued note from my last post, I have reviewed and revamped my GAME plan a little bit as I went through this week’s resource materials. First, a few things that I feel are going to be essential to accomplishing my goal…

Resources I will need to carry out my GAME plan: Internet access, promethean or any other smart board technology that will allow students to work interactively together on websites, software programs, and collaborative works, as well as a subscription to United Streaming in order to expose my students to real-world videos that tie in with our curriculum. I will need access to a document camera or scanner, as well as audio recording software. I will also be needing help from my colleagues as well as experts in the education field to collaborate with to get better ways I can expose my 1st graders to real-world problem solving while using technology. Additional Information I will need: How to step up a working digital portfolio that tall students, parents, and teachers can access, and how to assist my students in creating digital storybooks.

So, what have I done for to work toward my goal? Research! Being a self-directed learner I’ve always been one to gain as much information about a topic as I could before jumping into something that I have not through all the way through yet. So through talking with my own colleagues and searching online for ideas of what other teachers have done to use technology to help expose their lower elementary students to real-world situations, I’ve been able to piece together a few ideas for my 1st graders. One of the ideas I had gotten from a colleague was to have my students create a digital storybook on how to solve some type of real-world scenario. I am still working on what topic might be the best for my 1st graders so any suggestions would be great! I’ve used United Streaming in my classroom for a number of things, so I have been sifting through some of the videos available on there for some ideas.

Magan

Keeping up with the standards?

Does anyone else find that just because you have grown up in a digital age, teach in a digital age, and even study to learn more of the latest technologies out there, that it is easy to assume you are on top of it things? I don’t know about any of you, but I appreciate the opportunities when I am forced to take a step back and look at the areas of where I can even improve more in my knowledge and teachings using technology.

After going though the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers, there were two main standards that I can see that I need to be more proficient in. So I have developed a little GAME plan to help me achieve higher confidence and proficiency in the standards that I will “Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity” and “Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility.” They both may seem like simple tasks, but I think because of that, I have tended to overlook the importance of making a point to spend conscious time on each of these standards.

My GAME plan is as follows:

Goal: Expose students to solving real-world problems using technology while using professionalism and responsibility of their use of the web and other technology tools.

Actions: I will continue taking class and keeping up on the latest research to improve my knowledge of the available tools in the digital world. I will collaborate with other teachers in my district as well as on various teacher forums and blog sites to gain and share ideas of how other teachers have integrated real-world scenarios and projects with the curriculum and technology tools. I will develop lessons that keep students engaged, include appropriate technology tools, and make clear connection to students’ lives. I will teach specific lessons and model year long proper citations of courses, the seriousness of plagiarism, and proper netiquette.

Monitor: I will keep a digital portfolio of student work that allows me to see how well they are applying proper citizenship and responsibility on their projects. I will constantly take note of the amount of respect students have for the tools they are using. I will take time to reflect on a consistent basis how many of the strategies and suggestions I am applying in my own classroom that I have learned though discussions and research about integrating real-world situations into the curriculum.

Evaluate: I will compare lessons that I have planned and taught to the student products to evaluate if outcomes were met to the highest standard or not. I will make notations as to how I can improve lessons the next time around.

So that is my plan for now. As with everything, I’m sure it will need tweeking along the way, but we all know we have to start somewhere, right?