What a week! As I sit here writing my last reflection of my masters program, I am planning out my first activity in my brand new course, teaching Math Matters to 6th, 7th and 8th graders! Very exciting times!
The program is a new course that I am designing to include hands-on, interactive, innovative, and technology based activities to show students how math is used in the real world. I could not have planned better timing!
Walden has completely prepared me for this venture and has inspired me to look beyond the classroom walls to bring the world and all it has to offer to my students. Many of the lesson plans or activities that I have developed through the program and all the ideas shared and gained from my cohort will allow me the confidence to take on this project without any doubt and to continue to build on these ideas. I am motivated and ready.
The energy gained through this situation has encouraged me to stand out among my colleagues by bringing ideas and supporting their ideas to include technology resources. My school district is extremely fortunate and has resources readily available and a board and superintendent willing to support teachers’ innovativeness. I plan to take this energy and confidence and help my colleagues incorporate their ideas into 21st century skill-based activities, but will remember to do this reasonably and with a patient, kind spirit.
Technology for many is scary and taking complete leaps into some of these projects is difficult. I hope to be a supportive and patient liaison for my colleagues both veterans and beginning teachers alike.
I am grateful to my cohort groups and my professors here at Walden and feel very prepared to take on this role due to the many interesting dialogues we have had. I have learned to stop and really listen to others ideas and points of view and feel the discussion platform has really helped me with this. I also feel the discussions helped me see what it is really like in other areas of the country and what other districts are doing. All too often I get caught up in my own world; I just assume everyone else’s world is similar.
The program has offered a lot and has made a difference in ways I was not prepared but will benefit from for the rest of my life. Good luck to everyone and thank you for a fabulous experience!
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Online Learning Modules
Individualize your lessons and inspire your students using online learning modules!
Good luck and enjoy!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Got Differentiation?
As I reflect on the past two months in the course Reaching and Engaging All Learners through Technology, I feel confident on ways to differentiate in my classroom. All too often I have complained that we are given many reasons why we should differentiate but often not told how to differentiate. This course and network of peers has provided many “how to” ideas, strategies and resources.
One of the greatest resources I have found is the NING.com site. I have already created a network for my school and am looking for a way to use this in my classroom with all my students. The amount of resources available due to the internet can sometimes be overwhelming but having this network to share ideas and have other preview and try sites saves time and energy and allows us to use more of our time creating actual plans not searching. The most beneficial for me with this network was having teachers in other disciplines share resources and then trying to incorporate them into my plans. I created some interesting and creative lessons revolving around fine arts that I would not have thought of without Alisa Rourke’s posts.
This is very valuable for me as I begin a new position trying to bring math to life for my students and try to reach them and turn math on for them individually. Many times it is the artistic right-brained students that do not like math and can not click with math concepts but using these resources and lessons will be one way to acknowledge their interests and hopefully make a connection to the math curriculum through art.
Having to create a lesson that differentiated based on readiness and style has provided me with the practice and strategies necessary to develop many more activities based on required standards. I have wanted to develop a style in my class using menus and applying that lesson plan style I created will support this format and will make creating these standards based menus easier for this coming year. Of course having networks to share ideas and activities will also increase my success with following through with my ideas.
As I have mentioned in many posts and assignments, today’s students just expect technology so I need to learn ways to meld my lessons with technology and I need to start right from the beginning. Creating a simple survey to get to know my students and then having them reflect in a diary type log online in a NING network will be great strategies to ensure my inclusion of technology daily. This will provide the opportunity for me to learn about student interests and learning styles quickly and easily. This along with my reports from their standardized tests will certainly assist in creating a differentiated classroom.
No student is alike nor learns in the same way and despite the idea that “we all learned this way”, it is time to insist on making changes in our educational system. Hopefully teachers like us will take our information, strategies and new found confidence and show that it is not only possible but not very difficult. Actually when up and running a differentiated environment that promotes engagement requires less work on the teacher’s part and allows the teacher to be the facilitator and leaves the children to do the work. With careful planning the teacher puts the energy in on the front end but becomes the “guide on the side” throughout the year and the students are better off for it!
One of the greatest resources I have found is the NING.com site. I have already created a network for my school and am looking for a way to use this in my classroom with all my students. The amount of resources available due to the internet can sometimes be overwhelming but having this network to share ideas and have other preview and try sites saves time and energy and allows us to use more of our time creating actual plans not searching. The most beneficial for me with this network was having teachers in other disciplines share resources and then trying to incorporate them into my plans. I created some interesting and creative lessons revolving around fine arts that I would not have thought of without Alisa Rourke’s posts.
This is very valuable for me as I begin a new position trying to bring math to life for my students and try to reach them and turn math on for them individually. Many times it is the artistic right-brained students that do not like math and can not click with math concepts but using these resources and lessons will be one way to acknowledge their interests and hopefully make a connection to the math curriculum through art.
Having to create a lesson that differentiated based on readiness and style has provided me with the practice and strategies necessary to develop many more activities based on required standards. I have wanted to develop a style in my class using menus and applying that lesson plan style I created will support this format and will make creating these standards based menus easier for this coming year. Of course having networks to share ideas and activities will also increase my success with following through with my ideas.
As I have mentioned in many posts and assignments, today’s students just expect technology so I need to learn ways to meld my lessons with technology and I need to start right from the beginning. Creating a simple survey to get to know my students and then having them reflect in a diary type log online in a NING network will be great strategies to ensure my inclusion of technology daily. This will provide the opportunity for me to learn about student interests and learning styles quickly and easily. This along with my reports from their standardized tests will certainly assist in creating a differentiated classroom.
No student is alike nor learns in the same way and despite the idea that “we all learned this way”, it is time to insist on making changes in our educational system. Hopefully teachers like us will take our information, strategies and new found confidence and show that it is not only possible but not very difficult. Actually when up and running a differentiated environment that promotes engagement requires less work on the teacher’s part and allows the teacher to be the facilitator and leaves the children to do the work. With careful planning the teacher puts the energy in on the front end but becomes the “guide on the side” throughout the year and the students are better off for it!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
A Card Catalog??... Our Students Really Do Have the World at their Fingertips! We MUST adjust!!
What a great course this has been! Not only has this course helped me and my students directly, but my colleagues have been effected by the course and my GAME plan. Although I have not completed my GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) , I have made huge gains and more importantly I developed a schedule to follow through on my plan and to use when developing other plans.
I have come out of this class with activities that I created but also many that I have “stolen” from my classmates. I really have had some great groups to work with and I believe I have accumulated some great plans to use directly or as ideas to send me in the right direction.
The key to being successful though is to start small. We need to remember to support each other and make reasonable goals we can be accountable for. Just as we would not expect our students to jump right into multilevel projects without support, teachers should not be expected to do this when incorporating technology. Teachers should however, be required to make an effort and using the GAME plan (Cennamo, et.al, 2009) makes this much more attainable.
Throughout this course I have been reminded that technology can be infused into all subject areas. To often mathematics teachers try to remove any guilt they have about not incorporating technology or other great learning tools because the content is too straight forward and needs to be demonstrated and practiced as it “always” has. We have proven that to be completely false and have learned many great activities and ideas to use specifically in math. It is important for teachers to remember to share and to keep an open mind and most importantly, teachers need to be confident enough to ask for assistance when learning new technologies.
I shared this story within the discussion groups but must repeat it again. My first grade daughter just spoke with an expert on Sea Turtles in California while her class sat comfortably in their South Carolina classroom. Her teacher, a self proclaimed novice with technology, sent a clip of this to the parents via email. We all sat and watched the clip in amazement and were shocked and excited for our children. Our children on the other hand treated it like no big deal – the truth is it really was NO BIG DEAL!
Technology has made these types of activities easy, affordable and efficient. Educators need to catch up and use this technology on a regular basis because the children just expect it. AS I read one of those feel good emails explaining the differences between children of today and the children of 1980, I had to laugh when they commented on televisions with dials and no remotes, phones with busy signals and no caller ID, and email and texting replacing the postal service “snail mail”. Just as our generation did not understand having to walk 5 miles to school, up hill, both ways in the snow, this generation has no clue that a search about past American presidents involved a trip to the library, a card catalog, several large references books that you could not take home and lots and lots of note cards. Our students can research information about any country’s past presidents in seconds and even take virtual tours of the grounds they walked.
Teachers do not have to bring the students the information any more, students have the information and can get it instantly! Our job is to assist with the gathering, screening, editing and presenting of the information to help our students learn how to learn and discover on their own as self directed learners (Cennamo, et.al, 2009). Technology in the classroom is imperative for our students because they are connected to this world outside of the classroom and they need to understand and know how to interact with it!
Good luck to everyone, this has been a great journey with you and I wish you all the best!
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
I have come out of this class with activities that I created but also many that I have “stolen” from my classmates. I really have had some great groups to work with and I believe I have accumulated some great plans to use directly or as ideas to send me in the right direction.
The key to being successful though is to start small. We need to remember to support each other and make reasonable goals we can be accountable for. Just as we would not expect our students to jump right into multilevel projects without support, teachers should not be expected to do this when incorporating technology. Teachers should however, be required to make an effort and using the GAME plan (Cennamo, et.al, 2009) makes this much more attainable.
Throughout this course I have been reminded that technology can be infused into all subject areas. To often mathematics teachers try to remove any guilt they have about not incorporating technology or other great learning tools because the content is too straight forward and needs to be demonstrated and practiced as it “always” has. We have proven that to be completely false and have learned many great activities and ideas to use specifically in math. It is important for teachers to remember to share and to keep an open mind and most importantly, teachers need to be confident enough to ask for assistance when learning new technologies.
I shared this story within the discussion groups but must repeat it again. My first grade daughter just spoke with an expert on Sea Turtles in California while her class sat comfortably in their South Carolina classroom. Her teacher, a self proclaimed novice with technology, sent a clip of this to the parents via email. We all sat and watched the clip in amazement and were shocked and excited for our children. Our children on the other hand treated it like no big deal – the truth is it really was NO BIG DEAL!
Technology has made these types of activities easy, affordable and efficient. Educators need to catch up and use this technology on a regular basis because the children just expect it. AS I read one of those feel good emails explaining the differences between children of today and the children of 1980, I had to laugh when they commented on televisions with dials and no remotes, phones with busy signals and no caller ID, and email and texting replacing the postal service “snail mail”. Just as our generation did not understand having to walk 5 miles to school, up hill, both ways in the snow, this generation has no clue that a search about past American presidents involved a trip to the library, a card catalog, several large references books that you could not take home and lots and lots of note cards. Our students can research information about any country’s past presidents in seconds and even take virtual tours of the grounds they walked.
Teachers do not have to bring the students the information any more, students have the information and can get it instantly! Our job is to assist with the gathering, screening, editing and presenting of the information to help our students learn how to learn and discover on their own as self directed learners (Cennamo, et.al, 2009). Technology in the classroom is imperative for our students because they are connected to this world outside of the classroom and they need to understand and know how to interact with it!
Good luck to everyone, this has been a great journey with you and I wish you all the best!
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
GAMES for my students
Using the GAME plan is a new name for a very similar technique that teachers have employed for years. Modifying and adjusting our plans and activities was the old term but now it is referred to as a GAME plan requiring a more official acronym but basically meaning the same.
Therefore following through with a GAME plan should not be difficult even for the most OLD SCHOOL teacher and this is refreshing for me as I have many OLD SCHOOL colleagues and I am tired of “fighting” them to get them to do the right thing for their students and themselves. The convenient part for us as teachers when trying to incorporate the NETS-S standards is that the Teachers (NETS-T) standards are similar and can be carried out regardless of the curriculum we teach.
My goal is to have a realistic outlook and start small. The ideas and stories that we saw teachers and students working on in the video clips are experienced people and we should not assume that we can start off just like that.
For example, when planning to introduce photostories, my suggestion or action plan will be to start with some simple photostories of my content and use them in classrooms to introduce a lesson or new concept. This way the students are seeing what am modeling and can have some ideas or examples to follow. I will follow up on my plan by making sure that I begin the photostory process myself with lessons or introductions and break my students in gradually, although in this day, the students would probably prefer not to suffer through my work and hop right on up to the plate and get cracking!
Therefore following through with a GAME plan should not be difficult even for the most OLD SCHOOL teacher and this is refreshing for me as I have many OLD SCHOOL colleagues and I am tired of “fighting” them to get them to do the right thing for their students and themselves. The convenient part for us as teachers when trying to incorporate the NETS-S standards is that the Teachers (NETS-T) standards are similar and can be carried out regardless of the curriculum we teach.
My goal is to have a realistic outlook and start small. The ideas and stories that we saw teachers and students working on in the video clips are experienced people and we should not assume that we can start off just like that.
For example, when planning to introduce photostories, my suggestion or action plan will be to start with some simple photostories of my content and use them in classrooms to introduce a lesson or new concept. This way the students are seeing what am modeling and can have some ideas or examples to follow. I will follow up on my plan by making sure that I begin the photostory process myself with lessons or introductions and break my students in gradually, although in this day, the students would probably prefer not to suffer through my work and hop right on up to the plate and get cracking!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
A break from MY BREAK!!!
Being that I am on Spring Break, I have happily put all my goals on hold even though I have to admit this in front of all my classmates. I am enjoying my break and thinking about the work that I have to return to but promised my children breaks are breaks and that is important. Although that is not our lesson this week, I will advise those that do not have children yet that this is a very valuable goal to make for yourself. My first years of teaching I could never imagine being able to be an effective and good teacher and an effective and good mother, I felt I could be great at one or the other but not both. Through the years though I have learned the greatest part of life is being able to balance life and work and in the long run, I think, now, I am the best teacher I have ever been and a self proclaimed best mom in the world!!!!
What I have learned though through looking at the NETS-T standards and NETS-S standards is that we do not do enough in my professional circle to support these. If you are not in a graduate class right now it is not stressed very much. The state has required proficiency tests but I have yet to see anyone suffer a consequence from not meeting this goal, so I wonder how seriously we are trying to achieve these standards. I can say that in South Carolina, I have started to see these standards incorporated into classroom curriculum specifically in elementary and language arts but not really with mathematics yet.
For the next prompt, I AM NOT READY TO SET NEW GOALS!!! I am seriously working towards finding and creating technology based lessons for all of the standards for sixth grade math and now fifth grade math as I may switch to a fifth grade position in an elementary school next year. (Wish me luck, I should be interviewing next week!) I want to finish this and I want to get proficient using the data from USATESTPREP.com to benefit my students. One thing I learned through this process is to not underestimate the importance of a good partner that you can relate to and work well with and one that does not necessarily always agree with you. Having Joanna as my partner these past few weeks has forced me to stay on task and to define some of my objectives for good activities. There have been activities that I thought would be great but after she looked at it, she agreed it looked cool and cute but was not sixth grade standards and not meeting our goal. Your partner needs to be confident to correct and critique you and you do the same, this is how we grow!!!
I hope you all had a break this past month too and if you did you enjoyed it. I am off to watch the dolphins jump in the Gulf of Mexico from a Condo in St. Petersburg, Florida. My heart aches for those of you up North cold enough to get snow this week. More power to you … I can not do the cold!!!
What I have learned though through looking at the NETS-T standards and NETS-S standards is that we do not do enough in my professional circle to support these. If you are not in a graduate class right now it is not stressed very much. The state has required proficiency tests but I have yet to see anyone suffer a consequence from not meeting this goal, so I wonder how seriously we are trying to achieve these standards. I can say that in South Carolina, I have started to see these standards incorporated into classroom curriculum specifically in elementary and language arts but not really with mathematics yet.
For the next prompt, I AM NOT READY TO SET NEW GOALS!!! I am seriously working towards finding and creating technology based lessons for all of the standards for sixth grade math and now fifth grade math as I may switch to a fifth grade position in an elementary school next year. (Wish me luck, I should be interviewing next week!) I want to finish this and I want to get proficient using the data from USATESTPREP.com to benefit my students. One thing I learned through this process is to not underestimate the importance of a good partner that you can relate to and work well with and one that does not necessarily always agree with you. Having Joanna as my partner these past few weeks has forced me to stay on task and to define some of my objectives for good activities. There have been activities that I thought would be great but after she looked at it, she agreed it looked cool and cute but was not sixth grade standards and not meeting our goal. Your partner needs to be confident to correct and critique you and you do the same, this is how we grow!!!
I hope you all had a break this past month too and if you did you enjoyed it. I am off to watch the dolphins jump in the Gulf of Mexico from a Condo in St. Petersburg, Florida. My heart aches for those of you up North cold enough to get snow this week. More power to you … I can not do the cold!!!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Like the energizer bunny we must keep going and going and going...
How effective were your actions in helping you meet your goals? What have you learned so far that you can apply in your instructional practice?
For my first goal in technology based activities for every indicator, I would say I am right on target. I have identified a major weakness in our curriculum to be data analysis and probability. We have little interactive activities in this area that uses technology. So that will be my focus. And on Monday in my meeting with colleagues we had a guest come in and show us all of the benefits of assignment builder and quiz builder through discoveryeducation.com. This will be an invaluable tool.
Plan two was put on the side burner this week as I have much on my plate and my students can not access USATESTPREP.com due to standardized testing being held in the labs. SO I took this opportunity to focus on other issues. I still do have a question for everyone from last week: “we had another concern and I would like anyone’s opinion that has done research like this. Would it be better for one teacher to use one technique, while the other uses another OR would it be better for us to both try each technique with between different classes or within the same class? We had feelings about this but I would like to hear others thoughts before I share our ideas.”
What do you still have to learn? What new questions have arisen?
I feel at this point I can not learn much more and stay sane. I need to focus at this point on making lessons with this discoveryeducation.com, using video clips, stories and interactive activities to help support the data analysis and probability standard. My questions are about student use – will the students use this technology on their own? I really want to organize these lessons to be enrichment type things to put on my webpage and I am wondering how involved the students will be on their own. My other concern is how to monitor this in an easy yet productive way. Many times I have great ideas only to find out the management portion will put me over the edge.
How will you adjust your plan to fit your current needs?
Knowing that I expect to have finished products I need to allow myself some time during planning. This week I secured a definite way to do this because I was falling behind on myself. My cohort group is working on a “Center for Differentiation” and have been creating hands on activities based on RIT Band levels, but we needed time. My very self proclaimed "OCD" colleague and I have set a date every Tuesday during planning to work for 30 minutes on the center and 30 minutes on these activities. Knowing that I sometimes can let other things get in the way, having Joanna to keep me on task will be very beneficial to my success. I am honest enough to know my weaknesses and pushy enough to use others strengths to support me.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
So far so good...
Looking at my action plans I am confident that all is going well with the first two steps of my first plan. I have been meeting weekly and even a little more with my colleagues, second I have a place to store all of our activities and just worked on a way to help make it easier to send through email and download onto flash drives in the event any one of us leave the school we can take this with us and so we can share with other teachers. My third and fourth actions which involve identifying objectives or indicators that do not include technology based activities and then planning out activities using a variety of technologies is my focus. I feel that I have plenty of resources for this process.
First and foremost, I have my technology coach, Wendy, who works very closely with the math/technology coach at another middle school in the district. One email and she is supporting me in anyway, this is an invaluable resource. Second resource is my network of colleagues through my school, this program and friends I have built throughout the years. I believe in sharing and have built a huge network of people to share ideas with. This is outstanding!
A third type of resource I have is professional development through our district. Through this program we have met an educator that works with the SCETV and the Unitedstreaming system. She will be coming to my school on Monday, March 29th to help us learn new ways to incorporate all of the technologies they have available including online assessments. Through Discovery and ETV we have access to thousands of video clips and then can give online assessments and get feedback even when students work from home. Terrific resource!
My only concern is that I make sure I make time for actually producing finished projects, so I am making a Wednesday planning requirement for myself. If I have not created at least one activity by Wednesday then I have to spend Wednesday planning creating one! I just decided this as I reflected on my plans and realize that time is the only thing holding me back!
For my second goal, I felt confident also. However, I just met with a colleague about this and I have concerns about my plan. I was planning to focus only on the USATESTPREP.com data but she brings up the assessments we are getting evaluated on. We should be looking at those results and have students focus their practice based on this MAPS data. I would have to agree with her on this but also feel that these one day one time tests should not be the entire focus on my year. We discussed trying to have her focus on the MAPS scores and me to focus on the sites results and then move from there if we see a difference in our results. Only problem is our MAPS data is being taking next week for the year. This would be something we would have to try next year as soon as we start the year and begin with these students.
Then we had another concern and I would like anyone’s opinion that has done research like this. Would it be better for one teacher to use one technique, while the other uses another OR would it be better for us to both try each technique with between different classes or within the same class? We had feelings about this but I would like to hear others thoughts before I share our ideas.
Aside from this concern, I am loaded up with resources on were to get quality questions and have started to look over the site and learn how to make assessments and how to use them. We will however, be totally focused on Forced-Choice (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) format questions using this assessment. As I mentioned on my discussion post -- these type questions keep all the parents happy though so at least I will not battle a parent issue!!
Good luck to everyone and PLEASE share your thoughts and advise! And as always any and all ideas are welcome!!! Specifically in data analysis - as my colleague and I reviewed and really have a weakness on available activities on data analysis! Thank you!
LORI POWERS
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
First and foremost, I have my technology coach, Wendy, who works very closely with the math/technology coach at another middle school in the district. One email and she is supporting me in anyway, this is an invaluable resource. Second resource is my network of colleagues through my school, this program and friends I have built throughout the years. I believe in sharing and have built a huge network of people to share ideas with. This is outstanding!
A third type of resource I have is professional development through our district. Through this program we have met an educator that works with the SCETV and the Unitedstreaming system. She will be coming to my school on Monday, March 29th to help us learn new ways to incorporate all of the technologies they have available including online assessments. Through Discovery and ETV we have access to thousands of video clips and then can give online assessments and get feedback even when students work from home. Terrific resource!
My only concern is that I make sure I make time for actually producing finished projects, so I am making a Wednesday planning requirement for myself. If I have not created at least one activity by Wednesday then I have to spend Wednesday planning creating one! I just decided this as I reflected on my plans and realize that time is the only thing holding me back!
For my second goal, I felt confident also. However, I just met with a colleague about this and I have concerns about my plan. I was planning to focus only on the USATESTPREP.com data but she brings up the assessments we are getting evaluated on. We should be looking at those results and have students focus their practice based on this MAPS data. I would have to agree with her on this but also feel that these one day one time tests should not be the entire focus on my year. We discussed trying to have her focus on the MAPS scores and me to focus on the sites results and then move from there if we see a difference in our results. Only problem is our MAPS data is being taking next week for the year. This would be something we would have to try next year as soon as we start the year and begin with these students.
Then we had another concern and I would like anyone’s opinion that has done research like this. Would it be better for one teacher to use one technique, while the other uses another OR would it be better for us to both try each technique with between different classes or within the same class? We had feelings about this but I would like to hear others thoughts before I share our ideas.
Aside from this concern, I am loaded up with resources on were to get quality questions and have started to look over the site and learn how to make assessments and how to use them. We will however, be totally focused on Forced-Choice (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) format questions using this assessment. As I mentioned on my discussion post -- these type questions keep all the parents happy though so at least I will not battle a parent issue!!
Good luck to everyone and PLEASE share your thoughts and advise! And as always any and all ideas are welcome!!! Specifically in data analysis - as my colleague and I reviewed and really have a weakness on available activities on data analysis! Thank you!
LORI POWERS
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Lori Powers : Planning out my actions!!
May the luck of the Irish be with you today!
Although luck doesn't always help you accomplish your goals ... planning does!
Making plans are easy … it is following through with them that creates the conflict. I feel very strongly that a well thought out plan that is attainable provides the best possible opportunity for success. So as I look over my plan to incorporate technology into new curriculum and new areas of focus, I will need to set up several steps that can be measurable and realistic.
First I will need to continue to meet with colleagues every Monday to share lesson plans and activities. Considering this is a district mandated requirement, I can easily hold myself accountable for that and can consider that a definite resource in the future. I also sit on the district leadership team and meet monthly with math colleagues to share and support and communicate so that is yet another opportunity to learn from others.
Second, I will need a place to store the activities and plans already designed and those that I will be developing. Our group has already created a share drive that is South Carolina State Standard specific, I have that portion of the goal taken care of and can easily add to it.
A third step I must take would be to identify those indicators that have technology related activities and those that do not. This is the most important step for me right now. I do not want to jump right in to creating plans because I want to assure that I am not doubling up on some indicators and never completing other indicators, as my goal is to eventually plan an activity for each indicator. Now that does not mean I will not be open to a perfectly good completed activity if an indicator already has one but I will not spend my time creating technology driven activities for indicators that already has one attached to it. As A teacher I have that “license to steal” all awesome activities and lessons that anyone is willing to share!!!
My final step would be to look into the variety of technology available at my school and in the world. I might learn how to work certain software for example, Geometer’s sketch pad, to do an activity on transformations and could plan a fabulous activity but if my school does not have access to Geometer’s Sketchpad, then my efforts were for nothing. So accessing the technology leader at my school to assure we have the technology, the capability and the support and permission will be an integral part of the process.
My question to all of you is what type of technology should I make sure I incorporate? List cool activities that you have done with technology to spark my interest for my first activity!
The second goal I have will not require much more preparation but will require more time as I will need to develop good assessment questions for each unit in order to produce a USATESTPREP.com assessment for each standard.
First steps have been completed already as I have the standards list and know the indicators. I also have access to a bank of assessment questions that my district is working on but may need to add to it throughout the process. I have already set up my teacher account and my classrooms online and have looked through the tutorial and feel comfortable making assessments and assigning students to use them.
I would like to include a partner or assistant as my next step in this project, so I am going to have to entice some colleagues with the benefits this will provide. This is easily done however through the sales pitch of the program, having hardcore data that is accessible to parents, administrators and students that is computer scored and stored almost makes me feel unnecessary but provides the ease that will make my colleagues want to help. Yet the game like atmosphere to move up levels based on these assessments and practice activities has the students begging to participate. I feel a partner will help me to stay on track and focused and will keep the level of the assessments at the desired level. Everyone knows two heads are always better than one.
The last step I need to work on would be finding a way to collect and record all the statistics to evaluate the program. Usually a simple excel file will help pull all of this together but I want to take some time to see if the website will pull all of the information I want together on one form for me. I feel certain it should, it will require me looking through the tutorial section of the website and that just requires me to sit down and research it! If the tutorial does not provide what I need, I think I will contact the sales rep. as usually they are willing to figure out a way to make their product work for you.
I would love to hear everyone’s suggestions on how to decide what would be an acceptable measure to determine success? Last week I posed all students achieving an 80% on the tests but I am not sure I like that one. Please give me your ideas!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Continuous Improvement is my GAME plan!
As I reflect on the material we have been reading and think about the GAME plan introduced by Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer in our text, Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use, (2009) I constantly am reminded of my trusty ole educators’ mantra “modify and adjust”. Educators have always been expected and encouraged to reflect upon lessons plans and assessments and adjust accordingly for each group and for new technologies, this is still true today, yet somehow a bit more important because we are left in a situation that requires us to do a lot of this adjusting or tweaking on our own without supervisors requesting updates and checklists. We are increasingly expected to keep up with the times by learning the material ourselves or seeking out the support we need to make it work within our classroom environment. Simply closing our doors to this new age of technology and global learning will not be acceptable when trying to prepare our students to become successful twenty-first century learners.
Gibbons’ (2002 as sited in Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) concept of self directed learning is not new to education but is being highly recognized now as teachers are having to rapidly increase their own knowledge and skill without formal university specific instruction. Often teachers are having to set short goals to encourage themselves to continue to grow and then hold themselves accountable.
Having a guideline or set of standards such as National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T) set by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) provides educators with a path to hold themselves accountable to. As I look through these standards I am fairly comfortable with most of them however, I have been actively working towards improving my learning activities and classroom assessments. I have chosen to challenge myself to further develop my skills in the following two indicators in the second standard of the NETS-T. The second standard to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, indicators (a) and (d) are my focus for this challenge. My GAME plan is listed below in a bulleted form yet I struggle with how to evaluate myself.
My goal, the actions I plan to take and my monitoring flows through fairly simple however, I am not sure if I am creating an evaluative system that is concrete enough to hold myself to an honest evaluation system. I would love to get everyone’s feedback and suggestions.
Indicator (a) states that teacher can: "design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity" ( NETS-T, 2010).
South Carolina adopted new textbooks this year so therefore we adjusted our curriculum to this new textbook. Over the summer our district had a team develop the pacing guide and curriculum guide for each course this year. Working as a team we had colleagues divide up the lessons and plan out each chapter and the assessments to use this year and then we evaluate the plans and assessments after we had worked through the chapter. These plans have been rather generic and very textbook driven; even though we had successful activities from the past that we incorporated we have not branched out as a department and looked for new and creative ways to introduce these concepts. I am certain that the skills required for this indicator can definitely be strengthened and my plan is as follows.
Finally and most importantly, I feel, I need to share all of my results with colleagues. I think too much energy is spent by too many people recreating similar things. We need to be willing to learn from each other and improve on everyone’s attempts and experiences. That creates a truly successful learning environment as Ertmer stated in the video, is one of the four main things needed for teachers to learn and grow (Laureate Education Inc., 2009).
The second indicator I would like to work towards developing is (d) "to provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching" (NETS-T, 2010).
Our district has been focusing on assessments both formative and summative. We are planning to move towards quarterly summative assessments but my district coordinator is concerned with our daily formative assessments. His goal is to get us to be focused more on the indicators and our daily assessments and for us to use these assessments to form our lesson plans. More specifically he is interested in us building a database of appropriate assessment questions and a variety of ways to carry out assessments. Using technology would greatly improve our assessment databases and offer us assistance as we try to differentiate instruction and assessment for students at their individual level.
• Goal: To use technology and innovative ways to assess curriculum standards on an individualized basis. We just purchased USATESTPREP.com and I plan to create several online standards based assessments that the students can take independently. Based on their results I can direct the students to an individualized plan. I should also have this ability through our united streaming account but I need to focus on learning one first. Once I am confident and comfortable with the USATESTPREP.com I can move on to another site.
• Action: Create one appropriate assessment to use on USATESTPREP.com for each of South Carolina standards, making sure there were questions at least two questions for each indicator.
• Monitor: As a self directed goal, monitoring my own success will be my own responsibility, so it is important that I have a concrete plan that can be measured easily. I will need to give myself deadlines so I have the assessments available in a timely manner for the students to use. Again a simple check list should work here to help keep me on task and accountable.
• Evaluate: I will be using questions from our district assessment database or submitting my new assessment questions to the database, so I will know if my assessment questions are appropriate. To evaluate the success of the use of technology to administer, score and record these assessments I will be looking at the data offered from the site. I would like to see that my students are completing the assessments and the suggested activities to improve. I want to record the data of in class time and out of class time that students are participating. IF these assessments and activities are being used outside of classroom time, I feel results can only improve. I would like to see the students make an improvement in all standards areas and improve to a better than 80% accuracy rate from the pre-test to the post-test. I have struggled with this percentage. Every time we have to put a goal for our evaluation program we are always instructed to put 80% but I am not sure if that is acceptable or over the top expectations. However when I bring this up to my administration they are not concerned and recommend leaving the 80%. My concern is, if I have a history of having better than 80% improvement and success rate why would I settle for this percentage now? I would love to here some concrete measureable numbers that you have used in the past to compare this data to or hold myself accountable to.
Today teachers have an important role but must realize that our position of instructor has been modified more to a facilitator over the past decade and we must learn new skills and techniques to carry this position out successfully. Most of the time this has to be done independently and on our own time so we must have a plan and the acronym GAME (Cennamo, et al., 2009) provides an excellent model to follow and hold ourselves accountable in this self directed learning environment.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T _Standards_Final.pdf.
Gibbons’ (2002 as sited in Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) concept of self directed learning is not new to education but is being highly recognized now as teachers are having to rapidly increase their own knowledge and skill without formal university specific instruction. Often teachers are having to set short goals to encourage themselves to continue to grow and then hold themselves accountable.
Having a guideline or set of standards such as National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T) set by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) provides educators with a path to hold themselves accountable to. As I look through these standards I am fairly comfortable with most of them however, I have been actively working towards improving my learning activities and classroom assessments. I have chosen to challenge myself to further develop my skills in the following two indicators in the second standard of the NETS-T. The second standard to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, indicators (a) and (d) are my focus for this challenge. My GAME plan is listed below in a bulleted form yet I struggle with how to evaluate myself.
My goal, the actions I plan to take and my monitoring flows through fairly simple however, I am not sure if I am creating an evaluative system that is concrete enough to hold myself to an honest evaluation system. I would love to get everyone’s feedback and suggestions.
Indicator (a) states that teacher can: "design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity" ( NETS-T, 2010).
South Carolina adopted new textbooks this year so therefore we adjusted our curriculum to this new textbook. Over the summer our district had a team develop the pacing guide and curriculum guide for each course this year. Working as a team we had colleagues divide up the lessons and plan out each chapter and the assessments to use this year and then we evaluate the plans and assessments after we had worked through the chapter. These plans have been rather generic and very textbook driven; even though we had successful activities from the past that we incorporated we have not branched out as a department and looked for new and creative ways to introduce these concepts. I am certain that the skills required for this indicator can definitely be strengthened and my plan is as follows.
- Goal: to create and carry out one new activity or lesson that incorporates technology for each unit for the remainder of the year. Specifically focusing on areas that I have not attempted to use before.
- Actions: As each unit is shared with the members of the department I will look over all of the lessons, incorporate any plans I currently have in my files to include and modify any that can have technology easily integrated. Then choose an indicator or concept that does not have an interactive activity and create a technology enriched activity or lesson. I would like to try to use a variety of resources too but will not limit my creativity at this stage if an activity involves a wiki in two consecutive units. I would like to have one experience with digital storytelling, web conferencing and increasing experience with simulation software (Cennamo, et al., 2009)
- Monitor: I will be responsible to myself only for this but will make sure I keep track and look for concrete plans that I have tried and evaluated and more importantly reflected upon. I need to be self directed and motivated to assure that I grow as an educator and continue to provide optimum learning activities for my students. Would it be realistic here to include a checklist or rubric for myself? Would I use it and would it help be remain on task and accountable to myself? I know the text suggests this but I wonder would this just be one more thing I have to keep up with and make the process become a hassle.
- Evaluate: As with monitoring, I will be responsible for evaluating any new activities and lessons. My focus will be on student engagement, and success based on course assessments. I will also be noting whether I thought this activity was better than prior attempts, trying to be honest regarding time and energy exerted in relation to academic growth achieved. I want to assure that I am not blinded by my desire to involve technology because sometimes first attempts do not reach the goals you originally hope and adjustments could be very beneficial. I must be willing to admit what did not make improvements as well as what did.
Finally and most importantly, I feel, I need to share all of my results with colleagues. I think too much energy is spent by too many people recreating similar things. We need to be willing to learn from each other and improve on everyone’s attempts and experiences. That creates a truly successful learning environment as Ertmer stated in the video, is one of the four main things needed for teachers to learn and grow (Laureate Education Inc., 2009).
The second indicator I would like to work towards developing is (d) "to provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching" (NETS-T, 2010).
Our district has been focusing on assessments both formative and summative. We are planning to move towards quarterly summative assessments but my district coordinator is concerned with our daily formative assessments. His goal is to get us to be focused more on the indicators and our daily assessments and for us to use these assessments to form our lesson plans. More specifically he is interested in us building a database of appropriate assessment questions and a variety of ways to carry out assessments. Using technology would greatly improve our assessment databases and offer us assistance as we try to differentiate instruction and assessment for students at their individual level.
• Goal: To use technology and innovative ways to assess curriculum standards on an individualized basis. We just purchased USATESTPREP.com and I plan to create several online standards based assessments that the students can take independently. Based on their results I can direct the students to an individualized plan. I should also have this ability through our united streaming account but I need to focus on learning one first. Once I am confident and comfortable with the USATESTPREP.com I can move on to another site.
• Action: Create one appropriate assessment to use on USATESTPREP.com for each of South Carolina standards, making sure there were questions at least two questions for each indicator.
• Monitor: As a self directed goal, monitoring my own success will be my own responsibility, so it is important that I have a concrete plan that can be measured easily. I will need to give myself deadlines so I have the assessments available in a timely manner for the students to use. Again a simple check list should work here to help keep me on task and accountable.
• Evaluate: I will be using questions from our district assessment database or submitting my new assessment questions to the database, so I will know if my assessment questions are appropriate. To evaluate the success of the use of technology to administer, score and record these assessments I will be looking at the data offered from the site. I would like to see that my students are completing the assessments and the suggested activities to improve. I want to record the data of in class time and out of class time that students are participating. IF these assessments and activities are being used outside of classroom time, I feel results can only improve. I would like to see the students make an improvement in all standards areas and improve to a better than 80% accuracy rate from the pre-test to the post-test. I have struggled with this percentage. Every time we have to put a goal for our evaluation program we are always instructed to put 80% but I am not sure if that is acceptable or over the top expectations. However when I bring this up to my administration they are not concerned and recommend leaving the 80%. My concern is, if I have a history of having better than 80% improvement and success rate why would I settle for this percentage now? I would love to here some concrete measureable numbers that you have used in the past to compare this data to or hold myself accountable to.
Today teachers have an important role but must realize that our position of instructor has been modified more to a facilitator over the past decade and we must learn new skills and techniques to carry this position out successfully. Most of the time this has to be done independently and on our own time so we must have a plan and the acronym GAME (Cennamo, et al., 2009) provides an excellent model to follow and hold ourselves accountable in this self directed learning environment.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T _Standards_Final.pdf.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Technology Education through Inquiry Based Projects
This course has opened my eyes to using technology as a vehicle to meet other objectives instead of just as the objective itself. I was inspired through this course to begin to look at my curriculum and see when and were I can use and incorporate technology as a tool to aid and assist in the learning process instead of just learning about the technology. I know David Warlick (Laureate Education Inc., 2009) states that technology should be a way of connectivity and offers the opportunities to bring the world to them in the classroom, but my personal experience triggered by this course did not bring my students the world but rather brought the use of technology to aid in their learning and understanding curriculum concepts in the current course I was teaching.
Currently my students are in Pre Algebra in 6th grade and they are working on percent proportions and equations and within this content circle graphs were part of the material. Typically the students do these circle graphs with protractors and rulers and calculators and they do a great job of learning the formula and necessary concepts to make a correct circle graph. However, after reading and writing the materials for week five of this course, I tried something new and it was a success. The students were not involved in inquiry based projects really but we kind of turned this circle lesson into an inquiry based exploration using spreadsheets. Students have seen Excel spreadsheets before but did not have much experience, so I brought them to the lab and we explored spreadsheets using the concepts and formulas for circle graphs.
The students were each at a computer and we just took a survey about their favorite type of Valentine. We used textbooks and discussion to figure out how to write up the formula to figure out the percentage of each category and then the degrees to make the angle in their circle graph. I had no way of knowing which way this lesson would turn out, it was a spontaneous “let’s just do it” activity and it worked out fabulously. The students were motivated and excited, especially when they figured out that the spreadsheet would make the graph for them, which I learned as well! I was ready to look at a website that made circle graphs and thought I would include a discussion on searching the web for resources but was surprised when one of my normally “wallflower” type students got up in front of the room and taught us all how to simply insert a graph with this data. The class was engaged, the material was learned and the students have since asked would I accept their homework on spreadsheets if they can figure out the formulas to make the spreadsheet work. Of course, I said yes and have been amazed at the results. Through these formulas the students must manipulate the numbers and truly must understand the concept so my curriculum is being learned and applied in a real world aspect. This to me is more of a thorough understanding than following several examples I have done in class and just memorizing the procedures. This is “real” learning and is very inspiring to me and my students.
One specific area of interest I want to help my students develop at this stage is their ability to navigate a search on the web. This is very possible through many areas of my curriculum and I would be able to model the procedures often in class as I look for interactive lessons and activities on the topics we are covering. As stated in our text, Reading the Web (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007) modeling is still one of the best techniques for our students to learn. Even though the content may have changed that tried and true strategy still is a successful way for students to learn.
This has all been a result of this course and this program. I am not afraid to just try it and I have been reaching out to technology in ways I have never thought about. The lesson that we have created for this course is being adopted by my whole sixth grade and will be our week long project for all the teachers to work on during our week of standardized testing. Since our schedule is usually cut short and crazy we try not to overload the kids any more than the testing already makes them, therefore, the teachers in my team have decided that this would fit our curriculum and we would all work towards a common goal and a miniature museum. My excitement just keeps rolling on!!!
With all of this in mind and my excitement taking over … I would like to continue by assisting my colleagues with professional development opportunities so they can use and experience technology in a non threatening way. I would like for us as a team to work on another project or activity to incorporate many of the sixth grade standards and will allow our students to succeed and move forward with their twenty-first century skills. Although much of what I learned can be useful to me in my curriculum, I see so many opportunities for the social studies and language art teachers to develop inquiry based projects using the QUEST model (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007) that I just want to share all of these ideas. My goal is to look forward to helping my students and opening these doors for my students but more importantly assist my colleagues so they can also provide these opportunities for more students. By working with my colleagues not only do my students benefit but it provides opportunities for many more students in the end. This to me is exciting and as our excitement grows so will the students experiences with the world wide web and all of its possibilities.
References:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: author.
Currently my students are in Pre Algebra in 6th grade and they are working on percent proportions and equations and within this content circle graphs were part of the material. Typically the students do these circle graphs with protractors and rulers and calculators and they do a great job of learning the formula and necessary concepts to make a correct circle graph. However, after reading and writing the materials for week five of this course, I tried something new and it was a success. The students were not involved in inquiry based projects really but we kind of turned this circle lesson into an inquiry based exploration using spreadsheets. Students have seen Excel spreadsheets before but did not have much experience, so I brought them to the lab and we explored spreadsheets using the concepts and formulas for circle graphs.
The students were each at a computer and we just took a survey about their favorite type of Valentine. We used textbooks and discussion to figure out how to write up the formula to figure out the percentage of each category and then the degrees to make the angle in their circle graph. I had no way of knowing which way this lesson would turn out, it was a spontaneous “let’s just do it” activity and it worked out fabulously. The students were motivated and excited, especially when they figured out that the spreadsheet would make the graph for them, which I learned as well! I was ready to look at a website that made circle graphs and thought I would include a discussion on searching the web for resources but was surprised when one of my normally “wallflower” type students got up in front of the room and taught us all how to simply insert a graph with this data. The class was engaged, the material was learned and the students have since asked would I accept their homework on spreadsheets if they can figure out the formulas to make the spreadsheet work. Of course, I said yes and have been amazed at the results. Through these formulas the students must manipulate the numbers and truly must understand the concept so my curriculum is being learned and applied in a real world aspect. This to me is more of a thorough understanding than following several examples I have done in class and just memorizing the procedures. This is “real” learning and is very inspiring to me and my students.
One specific area of interest I want to help my students develop at this stage is their ability to navigate a search on the web. This is very possible through many areas of my curriculum and I would be able to model the procedures often in class as I look for interactive lessons and activities on the topics we are covering. As stated in our text, Reading the Web (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007) modeling is still one of the best techniques for our students to learn. Even though the content may have changed that tried and true strategy still is a successful way for students to learn.
This has all been a result of this course and this program. I am not afraid to just try it and I have been reaching out to technology in ways I have never thought about. The lesson that we have created for this course is being adopted by my whole sixth grade and will be our week long project for all the teachers to work on during our week of standardized testing. Since our schedule is usually cut short and crazy we try not to overload the kids any more than the testing already makes them, therefore, the teachers in my team have decided that this would fit our curriculum and we would all work towards a common goal and a miniature museum. My excitement just keeps rolling on!!!
With all of this in mind and my excitement taking over … I would like to continue by assisting my colleagues with professional development opportunities so they can use and experience technology in a non threatening way. I would like for us as a team to work on another project or activity to incorporate many of the sixth grade standards and will allow our students to succeed and move forward with their twenty-first century skills. Although much of what I learned can be useful to me in my curriculum, I see so many opportunities for the social studies and language art teachers to develop inquiry based projects using the QUEST model (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007) that I just want to share all of these ideas. My goal is to look forward to helping my students and opening these doors for my students but more importantly assist my colleagues so they can also provide these opportunities for more students. By working with my colleagues not only do my students benefit but it provides opportunities for many more students in the end. This to me is exciting and as our excitement grows so will the students experiences with the world wide web and all of its possibilities.
References:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: author.
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