Monitoring my GAME plan

After doing some more research and comparisons, and LARGELY by Phil Bonus’ assistance (thanks Phil!) I have decided to use wikispaces for my class wiki project. My own experience helped me to eliminate pbwiki as a contender and then the comparison tool from teachersfirst helped me to see the pros and cons between wikispaces and wetpaint. I was leaning towards wikispaces, but still unsure when luckily Phil posted about his experiences with both. While I don’t think it would have been a disaster if I picked the other choice, I am glad that I spoke to someone else who actually used them with students. I now need to re-read the chapter about wikis in my Walden text Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts by Will Richardson. That is one of the best textbooks I’ve ever read, it isn’t dry and difficult to understand like most others. I found his classroom examples very helpful. I need to now set up a fake wiki and test it out in school. I want to make sure the sites are not blocked at school, that my students don’t need email accounts, and the look is as I want it. Now if only I could find time in the school day to do this….

GAME Plan thoughts

To get my GAME plan in gear, I need to research free wikispaces for students, first of all. I found this great “wiki walk through” http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ on Teachers First website that goes through 3 main free wikisites: pbwiki, wikispaces, and WetPaint. I’ve used the first before in a grad class and didn’t much like the look of it, I also see my students having a bit of trouble with it. I need to use the comparison tool on Teachers First to decide between the other two and pick one to use. After that, I think that I should share my intentions with both the computer teacher and principal. I already have a class blog, and use it with no trouble, but I always like to run new technology by the administration (one, so they understand it, and two [honestly] to show that I know how to use this technology and it would be great to use with other classes). Being that I would use this wiki for a project in my next year’s class (since I already blew the first application of the birthstone project) I have a lot of time to play around and make a fake wiki. I always test out new technology before showing it to my students so I can get a feel for any difficulties they might run into. I think I will make a fake wiki on a simple topic (one of my favorites is my dog Lily) so that my students can see what their wiki page might look and feel like.

NETS-T

After reading the National Education Standards for Teachers I believe that I exhibit all five indicators with varying strengths. Two of the standards that seem to be my continuous goal however are designing and developing new experiences and facilitating my students’ creative learning. I feel that these standards tie together and would seamlessly integrate into a GAME plan.

I have done many digital projects with my students and my peers over the years with different success rates. Something that I have never done with my class, but have done on my own within Walden University is creating a wiki. I would very much like to try and create such an interactive learning experience. Recently, to culminate our Rocks and Minerals unit, I gave my students the optional project of doing a Birthstone Report. If they desired, individual students could research their birthstone using pre-evaluated website links I gave them and describe their birthstone using various classifications that we studied in class (hardness, transparency, value, location, etc). The students then typed or wrote their findings onto a poster and presented it to the class. Out of twenty-five students, only four chose to do this. I believe that if I had made this into a wiki project, many more students would have participated. By opening the project up to inspire collaboration and creative thinking, I could have had students born in the same month work together and post pictures as well as textual information about their birthstone.


To monitor my progress in this area, I would constantly check in with my students to see their work. I would provide time in class for my students to ask questions and advice from me. As any good teacher knows, modeling is key to success. Since this would be my first wiki project, I would have my class work together to create a sample wiki first so they know how to use the available technology. That way, they could do the birthstone project mostly at home. I would have minilessons as needed to show the class new features on our chosen wiki hosting page and to combat any problems that they might have. At the end of this project, I would evaluate not only my students’ progress but my own. Did I succeed in teaching twenty-five fourth graders how to navigate the web? Were they able to effectively compile research information and choose the most important facts? Were they able to put the information in their own words and properly credit their sources? If so, I know I am on a roll into creating many more collaborative wikis with my students. If not, I would hold a brainstorming session with the class to see if we could figure out how to remedy the situation, and be more prepared for a positive experience in the future.

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

Reflection Statement

Throughout this course I have learned that my students need to learn digital literacy skills along with traditional ones. While printed books are not likely to disappear anytime soon, online and virtual text is ever increasing. By teaching my students how to navigate the web, use a search engine properly, evaluate resources, and give proper credit to authors, I am being a responsible teacher in a Web 2.0 world. I believe that the most striking revelation that I had was that I believe I was taking for granted the fact that I personally know the web isn't linear. People cannot read websites the same way as they read the latest fiction book, or even non-fiction textbook for that matter. I know how to read and navigate a website, and I realized that I often assume my students do as well. In the past, I could never understand when a student would say to me, "That information isn't on the page, I looked!" I would march over to their computer, click a few buttons, skim quickly, and point out that the information was right in front of them if only they had looked a little harder! (What did they mean they didn't realize that the place where toucans live is under the page called "habitats," not the main page?)


This ties into my goal for the future. I need to make more of a concerted effort to teach my students how to more easily navigate webpages. By skimming side bar (or top bar) links, scrolling down while looking at headings, and thinking of synonyms for the keywords they are looking for research will be much less stressful both both them AND me! I think that by modeling several examples and having my students "be the teacher" to practice will really help them to learn that digital literacy.

Course Reflection

I feel that since I contemplated becoming a teacher I have always been drawn towards the constructionist way of thinking, even before I knew that was what it was called. As a student I loved building things and figuring out how the academic puzzles went together. As a teacher, I so enjoy the expressions on my students faces when they are creating artifacts and figure something out. I feel that too often in today’s society, teachers have a misguided theory of instruction, and view children as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. In fact, students bring a vast array of previous knowledge, experiences, and worldviews to the classroom setting. I believe that learning activities and experiences should therefore be guided by the constructionist approach, which incorporates and builds upon students’ insights and understandings via inquiry based learning and active exploration. Instruction should be engaging and ought to stimulate a variety of senses, including visual, tactile, and auditory, and is as such in my classroom.

To enhance that engaging instruction, I would love to create more webquests. I want to speak to my grade level about their idea for the exciting technology and work together to create at least one more for our school or grade level. Another short term goal is to become even more student-centered. I know that I have the intention of doing so, and can sometimes “hog” the SmartBoard to demonstrate skills such as notetaking. If I use the track changes feature in Word (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, p.122) I could more clearly show my students exactly what I mean. I have used the track changes features countless times on my own, but have never thought to use it as a modeling tool for my class. If my class can see how I ignore certain sentences, and shorten others I think that visual aide will be beneficial. After I model a paragraph or two I would use Word to type up my notes in “student speak” so that they can see what that end result would look like. I believe I would use this tool first to model, and then put up a new paragraph for my students to work on in pairs, for another type of practice.

As a more long-term goal I would like to focus on reinforcing effort. By using self-evaluative rubrics and an effort achievement spreadsheet (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, p.159)I could physically show my students that effort DOES matter! By having my students assess their effort and then see the correlation between their effort and their grades, they would (hopefully) be more motivated to try harder in school. I would start out the year with simple charts with something as quick as multiplication timed tests. The students who studied would see they did better. As the year went on I would have my students work on charts for unit tests and quizzes to show the large impact studying/practicing can have on success.

My last technological goal would be to integrate concept maps and advanced organizers into my classroom. “Advance organizers help students focus their learning ((Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, p.73).” Most students have used graphic organizers such as webs either on paper or digitally before, but to provide some of the information in the “bubbles” beforehand helps to focus the student in knowing what to take notes on. When my class does their annual research report on global warming, a site such as Spinscape would help them to organize their notes and even link to the sites where they found information. There would be no more (or at least less) “I don’t know where I found that info” or “Sure, those are my own words.” By typing up their notes and physically moving around the nodes, students would see how to best organize their materials into a streamlined research report. It would also be easier for teachers to check the sources to ensure facts were being written. This is something else I would like to discuss with my grade level, the computer teacher, and our librarian as we all work together to plan the research projects each year.

Teamwork is essential in many of my goals. I need to teach my colleagues what I have learned and then collaborate with them on how we should best utilize our new knowledge. Just as I want to share my new ideas with my personal classes, I also want to enlighten my peers so that they are able to enhance their teaching styles as well. With all of these goals in place and the skills I learned from this course I believe that we will all be able to more successfully integrate technology in a more meaningful and student-centered way.

References

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom

instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Voice Thread on Bullying

My VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/share/567753/

I really enjoyed using VoiceThread to make an interactive project for my class. I can foresee using this website to view existing VoiceThreads and also having the students make their own. For this application, I chose to focus on a guidance type lesson. My school is very proactive in the field of Character Education, and has been wonderful over the years incorporating these real life skills into our everyday lessons so they do not seem forced. Thus far in our program, we have focused particularly on bullying. Our guidance counselor does a unit every year in every grade on what bullies are, why they bully, and what to do as the victim. The lesson are received well, and I think that our students have a fairly good handle on these concepts.
Before the school year ended a few teachers and I decided that we needed to do more to focus on the bystander’s role, as that affects most of the students. There are so many songs, TV shows, movies, lessons, etc. that empower the victim and help correct the bully (all good ideas by the way). We found, however that there is not enough out there to show the bystanders, which are the majority of the students, what to do besides “tell a teacher.” I decided to make a VoiceThread that let the students know that I have been in their shoes, and I know it isn’t as easy as running to the nearest adult. I posted three pictures, speaking about the role of the bully, the victim’s role, and lastly the bystander’s role. I asked my students to post either an experience they have had as a bystander or what they would do in the future when they are one (knowing that situation is inevitable). I envision my students jumping right on this, and would open it up to the whole school. My students from last year already know how to post on VoiceThread, so perhaps they could post first to show other what to do. I also believe it would be powerful to see if others, who are not in our school, post their reactions so that the students could see other’s experiences.

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Dr. Orey (Laureate Education, 2008), speaks about jigsaws as great way for classes to work collaboratively. I wholeheartedly agree that jigsaws can be beneficial in teaching students the topic at hand by making them experts and teachers themselves. As Dr. Orey explains, teaching another person is one of the best ways to solidifying knowledge (Laureate Education, 2008), so this learning theory capitalizes on that idea. In my classroom, while we are studying explorers, I have my students create a Help Wanted Poster as one of our culminating activities. We start by having students talk about what they have learned about explorers in general, and why most explorers ventured out. I then break the students in 4-6 groups and assign them an explorer they might not have heard of (ex: NOT Columbus!). Students research in their groups using books, newspaper articles, and their textbook to find out basic information about their explorer. Next year, I would like to add in a technological component and ask my students to research their explorer online as well. After the groups become experts, students go back to their original groups and share their newfound knowledge with the others and they all use their knowledge to create a generic Help Wanted poster for an explorer. I would like to alter this as well, and give groups the choice of creating a paper and pen poster, or a virtual one using Publisher or PowerPoint. Everyone would have to do the same project, but this would give them the choice of medium.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008a). Social learning theories [Motion picture]. Bridging

learning theory, instruction, and technology . Baltimore : Orey.