Game plan reflection

I believe that my game plan has been extremely successful over the span of this course. It was really good for me to take a step back to set goals and really lay out what I want to accomplish growth-wise in my classroom. I think that some of the digital based lessons I came up with for my students will be keepers and will really benefit my future classes. Adding technology to lessons can be an extremely worthwhile pursuit. My students were overall more engaged and created some amazing projects. I believe from the assessments that they also learned more as well. My classes performed better on the tests and projects than previous classes. My professional acumen has also grown over the past few weeks. The first growth area stems from this very class. By forging forward towards my masters degree I am working to further my abilities as a teacher. I am learning more and collecting more tools and strategies for my classroom. I have also begun to attend more meetings and to take more of a leadership role at my school. In the past I had just watched from the background as meetings were held and things decided. Now I feel I have input to add and decision making ability to leverage. All of this carries from the desire to improve my professionalism.

Help students

After working on my game-plan for several weeks now something would be amiss if it were not benefiting my students. After all, this is the main purpose for the game-plans existence. I have been taking Masters level courses in order not to benefit me, but to provide better experiences for my students.

One of my goals was working on my professionalism. This goal doesnt directly benefit my students. However, I believe that furthering my knowledge and developing contacts and relationships with other professionals will indirectly provide a tremendous benefit for my students as they are introduced to new experiences and possibly new opportunities.

The second goal was to provide students with digital age experiences. I think that this is a wonderful way to directly influence my students for the better. So much of school is the same focus as 10 or even 20 years ago. However, so much of the workplace has changed. There is such a focus on digital life and technology that if students were presented with the same learning as their parents the system would be an abject failure. I attempt every day to provide my students with digital age experiences that are not only interesting to them, but will give them experience that will benefit them in the workplace. I think that students who know how to use word processors and students who know how to make interesting presentations are destined to be more successful than students who are unable to do these things.

Game plan update: Wikis

This week I really got into the idea of creating a wiki for my classroom. I joined the wiki for posting our lesson plans and got to see what can happen when a group of people get together to create something. It really is quite amazing to work with other people to compile information and experience. Its true that people can accomplish much more when working together. I think this would be an invaluable tool for a classroom setting. I've worried over the past few months about how it would be received by my students due to their diverse abilities and backgrounds. However, I now believe that it could be useful for any student as long as the correct instruction and background knowledge is applied.

On the NET-S front I attended a faculty meeting today and conferenced with a group of teachers to meet the needs of a troubled student. Things like this really make me feel growth as a professional. I also just finished a lesson plan in which my students create a mechanical arm using the AutoDesk Inventor program. This program allows students to create objects in 3D on the computer. The mechanical arm is a multi-step project that challenges students in their creation and organization abilities. I've been thrilled with the outcome of planning more digital experiences for my students.

I would like to begin focusing on NET-S standard #1 which supports the development of student creativity. I feel that during these digital lessons students should really have the change to spread their wings and create things. It is rare in school when a student truly gets to do what they want with their project.

Game plan update:

My game plan so far has not been terribly effective. I mean, it's only two-three weeks in so Im not expecting miracles. I am however noticing that I am getting used to adding technology more and more to my lessons. I am also working on being a professional and influencing other people to act with professionalism in their every day meanderings. I am on the related arts team at my middle school and it is a very diverse group of people. They often act on situations by joking around or making jokes about students. At times I can see this as appropriate. When a student does something funny we all enjoy the re-telling. However, at other times it detracts from the meetings we have and often devolves into actually making fun of the student. I try not to take part in this. Im trying to influence things for the better by sharing the positive things that my students do and keeping the negative ones to myself. I believe this this will add to the level of professionalism in my school.

Currently my need is to get healthy. I am adjusting my game-plan this week by getting things done with the day that I took off school. My nose just wont stop running, but Ive got my postings done and Ive got my reading completed.

So far!

I believe that I am making satisfying progress on my Game Plan. I have been working hard as a professional to improve my skills and knowledge base. This has included an abundance of reading material, staying after for meetings, taking classes online, and just generally attempting to think like a professional. My biggest struggle over the past 3 years has been transitioning from college student to adult. Most of my friends are younger and weekends can be rough on me if I let them. However, I've been making progress with acting more professionally and responsibly.

My lesson plans almost all include some sort of technology now. Being a Tech Ed teacher, this comes fairly easy to me. I've been attempting lately to do two things with my lessons. The first is to attempt to add even more tech to each lesson. This I have been struggling with to an extent. Some of the lessons I have tried have flopped for various reasons. Others I have really liked and will use in the future. Secondly I have been trying to switch from paper tests to more active tests where my students have to perform a task. Students tend to like these tests more than more than the traditional style of test, and most do better.

I have the resources I need. I'm trying to meet my goals and become a better teacher every day that I enter the classroom.

Carry Out my plans

Since my goal is to improve in the following...

2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

I will need to requisition certain information and materials.
Firstly, in order to develop digital age lesson plans I will need updated equipment for my classroom. Technology goes out of date so very quickly in schools. Its so hard to stay at the front of the curve. In order to offer my students genuinely useful digital opportunities I will need my computers to be up to date. I will need my yearly equipment replaced quickly and efficiently and at the same time I will need the opportunity to request new pieces of technology for my students. I have already dealt with procuring new computers for my lab and replacing parts for my kits. I have been in talks about procuring new software programs that will target my student's needs and give them an opportunity for advancement.

To develop myself in the second area I will need constant exposure to professionals. I will need to place myself in groups and meetings where I am expected to grow and take part in a learning community. It is not enough to plateau in education. One must be constantly striving to improve. Another thing I may need is funds to continue classes and learning at a higher level. My district pays for some but not all of my higher level education. Im already here at Walden learning and improving my skill set.

GAME Plan

While going over the NETS-T standards I was able to narrow it down to two that I felt I wanted to include in my game-plan. They are as follows...

2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

I would like to continue working to engage my students with Digital age learning experience while at the same time continuing my professional development. In order to reach these goals I plan on working to develop at least one new digital age experience a week in my lesson plans. I would like to have my team leader review this lesson and perhaps request feedback from it as well. I would like to add things like wiki's and multimedia presentations to my existing lessons. I feel this will strengthen my classroom and the learning opportunities that my students have. I am targeting the second goal by continuing my education at Walden. I am also participating in a variety of collegial groups at my school discussing technology and the magnet program. I feel that by surrounding myself with colleagues who are interested in further developing their teaching skills I will move mine along as well.

To assess and extend my learning I believe I will look to my students. They are the ones who determine whether or not I am a successful teacher. Their skills and abilities determine how well I am doing. I will assess my students not only to determine my personal effectiveness but also to determine my next area of growth.

Reflection

My course experience has opened my eyes to a new way to approach lesson planning in my classroom. So often I felt locked into the curriculum that was provided me by the Project Lead the Way company. I felt I had to present the lessons in the way they were given to me in as straightforward a manner as possible. The learning objectives that they provided were clearly the most important, and what I should be focused on in any lesson.
However, in this course I was presented with a myriad of literacy skills that I realized my students were lacking. I was shown that my students needed more than just the technology objectives presented by my curriculum. I could do so much more in a lesson where students build a house than just simply have them build the house. I could teach my students how to research online. I could teach them how to choose good websites from bad. I could teach them how to synthesize data and present it in a clear and effective manner. All the while my students would be learning about construction technologies while also developing their literacy skills.
I have learned so much from this course. I have truly learned how to integrate literacy skills into my every day lessons. This will influence and change every facet of my instruction. My students will benefit and my lesson planning will benefit. Even the lessons that don’t go well will be more effective because they target multiple areas. In the future I want to fully integrate these skills into each and every project I have my students complete. I want them to have to opportunity not only to create in my class but also to develop. So often I get lost in the project when I need to be thinking about the process. These literacy skills will help me keep focus on what’s truly important in every lesson.

Reflection

This course has been a rough one for me. I have been away at my parents for much of the summer and only check my course work two times a week. However, I believe I have managed to take a few important things from this class.
I want to say that I made modifications to my personal learning theory, and I'm sure that I have, but nothing that would directly contradict my first application. I now place a little more value on constructivist learning theory. I want my students to construct their knowledge in my classroom. They can do this through project based learning activities, and through group projects. Things like summarizing/note taking and cooperative learning have influenced how I will plan and manage my lessons. (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007)
As of right now, I have no immediate changes to make. It's summertime and there are no students! Seriously though, I want to build in more group activities for my classes that can handle them. My other classes I want to work with so that we progress towards being able to handle group learning activities. I want to focus instruction based on project completion so that my students can explore and freely construct their own meaning. I plan on switching my lesson plans so that they incorporate more of each of these things.
I suppose the above are both my immediate and my long term goals. Technology in the classroom is an important concept, but its even more important to understand how the technology is affecting students. I think that this is the key to a successful, technologically integrated, classroom.

References
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom
instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Social Learning theories

The instructional strategies discussed this week were relatively easy to connect to social learning theory. Social learning theory is the belief that students learn by interacting and observing others through a variety of different situations. This can be observed in very young students as they imitate an older sibling or in older students as they observe a behavior or action and attempt to implement it themselves. Our very classrooms are social learning platforms where students observe and learn from their interaction with us.

The learning resources and strategies mentioned this week all came back to the same idea. Students need to interact with each other in order to construct and develop meaning. The different strategies included students developing projects together, or creating voicethreads, or even playing games together through their computers. All of these things promote interaction with course material which is what we should strive for in a strong social learning environment. Student interaction will foster strong development as long as it is focused and on task.

In my classroom sometimes it can be difficult to allow my students to work in groups. It really depends on what the class can handle. I've found that when I can manage to do focused group work in a class my students learn more. For some classes I've had this is simply not an option. Most classes I plan in group instruction and projects. I usually have one or two a year where I simply cannot trust the students with any equipment so they miss out.

My VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/share/523158/

Constructivism

I found this weeks reading from the "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction" book to be very informative and very interesting. The chapter begins by Introducing the following generalizations:

1. The generating and testing of hypotheses can be approached in an inductive or deductive manner
2. Teachers should ask students to clearly explain their hypotheses and conclusions.
(page 202)
They followed up with the following generalizations...

1. Make sure students can explain their hypotheses and conclusions.
2. Use a variety of structured tasks to guide students through generating and testing hypotheses.
(page 203)
These two sections clearly explain how teachers should approach the generation and testing of hypotheses in their classrooms. They are to require students to be able to explain their thought process while at the same time providing students with tasks to support students in their research and conclusions.

In my opinion the generating and researching of hypotheses is directly correllated with constructivist theory. Nothing is better at allowing students to construct knowledge than to let them develop and test their theories and ideas while at the same time challenging them to explain as they go. The text goes on to explain six different ways that students can do this.

1. systems analysis
2. problem solving
3. historical investigation
4. invention
5. experimental inquiry
6. decision making

These six activities are excellent ways to force students to develop theories and test them. The text suggested that spreadsheet software be used to assist in this, but also stated that not a lot of time should be spent gathering data, rather more time be spent on analysis and conclusions. (page 204)

The different instructional strategies talked about in this weeks resources all align directly with constructivist theory because they allow the student to create something. It is assumed that with this creation students are also creating knowledge of their own. This is the very basis of project based learning. Students are to create their own knowledge in an attempt to build a firmer foundation than simply stuffing them with facts from a lecture or a textbook. Students who apply data are generally more likely to be influenced by it than students who simply hear or read it.


Resource:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Cognitive theories

COgnitive theories of learning treat the mind as a learning tool that can be understood. This is a very different approach than the behavioral learning theories. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski talk about two sets of instructional strategies to support cognitive learning approaches in the classroom.

The first one they discuss is "cues, questions, and advance organizers". In a classroom these three things could be presented through various forms of software. Word Processors can be used to create cues, or present questions. Spreadsheets can be used as advanced organizers. And numerous organizing applications can be used to sort and order thoughts and ideas. In a cognitive learning classroom these things are all directed towards stimulating the student's ability to learn. These different software styles give students the tools to organize their thoughts, and different cueing or questioning techniques are included in lessons in an attempt to stimulate student learning and thought process.

The second strategy they talked about was "summarizing and note-taking". This can be instituted by using the same software mentioned in the last paragraph. Students can use word processing software to do both of these things. Summarization is an extremely important cognitive skill for students to cultivate. They can type a short summary to an article, or summarrize directions to an assignment. They could jot down notes into an outline in powerpoint or possibly type out important facts into a bulletted list in Microsoft Word. These two techniques are designed to target students ability to sort through important data, and weed out the important parts.

Overall both of these instructional strategies are very strong in their ties to cognitive learning theory. They both really target students thinking skills and attempt to develop them further in whichever way they can. Technology can be used to assist these attempts by giving students a medium in which to be questioned or in which to organize their thoughts.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Correlation

There are a lot of ways that the strategies discussed this week correlate with the behaviorist theories. Just the term "reinforcing effort" directly aligns with what a behaviorist would want to see in his classroom. A teacher dedicated to reinforcing effort would be seen praising and providing positive reinforcement and personal recognition to students. A behaviorist would be doing the same things. They would set student effort as their behavior goal and they would attempt to reinforce and promote that behavior through "reinforcing effort".
The same thing happens when one looks at "Homework and practice". Both of those things are distinctly behaviorist practices. They give the students ample time to expose themselves to the material and to drill and practice things.
Behaviorism is a theory that bases its ideas off of reinforcement and practice. Both of the strategies discussed in the materials this week deal with reinforcement and practice. If effort is the goal for your instruction then reinforcing effort is your best bet to promote that. If your students need more time to practice a topic, then drill and practice, possibly during homework, are your best bet.

Reflection

Over the past eight weeks of this course my knowledge of technology has certainly grown. I was aware of the different areas that the course covered but I was not proficient in them. I now feel comfortable utilizing these tools in my classroom. I also have a higher comfort level when exploring these tools on my own. My level of teaching knowledge has also grown. I have seen how these concepts are taught on a graduate level and I have begun to apply these to my middle school classroom. The podcasting assignment was fantastic because it required me to learn something at the same time as my students. It also helped that my students absolutely loved recording their responses to the questionnaire. I feel that these experiences have started me down the path towards a stronger 21st Century skill based classroom.
I have never had a particularly teacher-focussed classroom. Ive always thought that students learn best by experiencing things and exploring on their own. I try to do as little lecturing as possible. This class has helped me further this goal by teaching me some new tools to apply to my lessons. I can now have students orchestrate their learning experiences and interactions through wiki's and blogs rather than through additional direct instruction. Students can teach each other! I plan to continue utilizing and exploring the different tools from this course and also any new tools I happen upon in order to further my own knowledge. This commitment towards my own improvement will reveal itself in my student's acheivement in the classroom. A teacher must be a life-long learner if they want to instill that same commitment in their children.

My first, and main, goal in my classroom as always is to master my student management for each and every new activity. I have always been weakest in the area of student management. This mainly stems from the fact that I like to have a good time too! However, anytime something new is attempted there are always unknowns and management tweaks that need to happen. Long term I would like to gain the flexibility to add new lessons to my classroom and incorporate new technology while not losing any control over my class.

My second goal is more of a long term goal than the first. I would like for my students to look back when they get their job and think that my class provided them with the most important skills for their vocation. I believe that for me this means an integration of the 21st Century Learning skills. I need to teach my students the things that will allow them to succeed in the workplace. If they can look back and see that they received those skills in my class, then I will have been a successful teacher.

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

The 21st Century Skills website was an interesting read. I took some time today to explore the site and read through its articles and qualifications.

First impression: I was a little worried when the first headline posted on the site mentioned that they had trained 50 people. I'm always skeptical of sites that have big mission statements and goals, but in reality reach very few people. However, after looking at this I immediately went to their FAQ page and looked at the members. Big names! I was impressed with the national scope of the members in this program. So I went back to read the full article about training people and found that this was a program recently started. Fifty people isn't too bad for that.

Looking under their state initiatives section I noticed that they only had 10 sates signed up under their initiative so far. For a program that appears to have been around since 2004 this is not bad, but neither is it anything amazing.

I began going through the resources the site had posted. There were a lot there. The tool they used for their route 21 program with the rainbow and pools was interesting, but a little confusing. Once you chose your section of the tool though there was a lot of useful information to browse through.

I had little to no significant problem with anything I saw on the site. There was a lot of information to go through, but it seemed pretty standard to me. My students wont be affected by this directly yet, as they are in Maryland which isnt one of their states. However it could be in then future so its good to browse through all this program has to offer. I hope to look more at this in the future.

Blog Possibilities

Creating this blog last week made me think a lot about how I would use it in a classroom. In a lot of ways I could see it truly benefiting students. It would be great to have kids conversing with one another over a blog on any sort of topic. I don't really see a blog being used as anything other than a discussion board, but it would be fantastic at that. I could envision students posting their views on current issues, talking with one another about the best way to approach situations, or complimenting one another's work. I teach technology to 6th 7th and 8th graders. I find it is most difficult for them to explain what they think or feel about something. These blogs would greatly assist students in learning to convey feelings and ideas.

Testing Blog

This is a test for my first blog