Reflection-Final Posting

All in all, I feel that I’ve created a pretty good GAME plan. Although I didn’t completely follow through with it (since I said that I would use it with my students next year) what I was able to accomplish, I feel proud of. After a lot of research on which site was the best, looking at other teachers’ existing wikis, I made my own wiki that I will eventually use with my class. I modified my plan slightly to perhaps test this out with my class this year to simply copy and paste a report that they are going to do in Word into the wiki. I already set up usernames and passwords for my class this year, and put simple instructions on the wiki itself so when/if we do this, my students shouldn’t be TOO confused. Next year when I actually do the birthstone project, I will revamp the site and add my class as users. It might be fun to leave my old class with member status however so they can comment on their predecessors’ work. To a fourth grader, having a fifth grader say “good job!” is fabulous! I’m excited to use wikis in my classroom, although I don’t think I would use them with every report-style assignment. I still think it is valuable to have a hand written first draft and have peers edit in colored pencil to easily see comments/changes. I know that that can be done electronically, I do it all the time with track changes in Word for my colleagues, but as nine and ten year old working out the physical aspect of writing their thoughts down is something they need to master.

Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

I believe if I act out my GAME plan as I intended, I will hit most of the NET-S. The first NET-S standard addresses creativity and says “Students [must] demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology (National Education Standards for Students, 2007).” When my students use their knowledge about rocks, minerals, and their various properties to design and create a wiki page concerning their personal birthstone, I would say they are demonstrating an immense amount of creativity. They are using their current knowledge, researching new information, and applying it to a brand new technological concept. Not only do they have to master the content knowledge, but groupwork skills, and technological awareness as well; thus covering four NET-S standards (numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6). The fifth NET-S standard that my students would cover is that of digital citizenship. Along with the ever popular and oh-so-important plagiarism speech, the computer teacher and I would instruct how to properly cite sources so that the students as giving credit where credit is due. On their wiki pages they would have a “Works Cited” page and list all of the resources (either internet or book) where they found their information. As they are only in fourth grade, they do not do parenthetical citations, but a list of resources is sufficient enough. Upon reading the NET-S, I feel that they are extremely closely linked with the same NET for teachers, and as good teachers if we cover our own standards we will cover (or mostly cover) the student standards. With slight tweaking, we can hit them all. Although I don’t feel it is necessary to cover ALL NET-T and ALL NET-S in one lesson or unit, it can sometimes work out without seeming forced!






References

National Education Standards for Students (NETS-S) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standards/NETS_for_Students_2007.htm

Revising Your GAME Plan

My progress is going slowly. With all of the other work for this class, my own classroom, and the fact that I just got a student teacher I haven't played around much more with my pretend wiki. I have however discussed the topic with my class to see if they thought next year's students would be interested in creating a wiki. I figured if they said no it would open up a dialogue and get me to rethink my goals, as I don't want to spend time creating a huge project with little to no enthusiasm from my kids. Luckily, my class thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and wanted to know if we could try one later this year (oh dear…). I'm still looking around for more examples of class wikis in elementary school to guide me, but I am not ready to change my initial goals. I think my project is a good one, and I need to just keep going with creating my pretend wiki as a model for my class. Next time I try to improve my learning, I will do just as I have done, set up a model, have a conversation with my class to gauge their interest level, and tweak as needed.