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.
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James M. to Lori,
ReplyDeleteHi Lori, I am interested in knowing more about your in-service, you seem very excited about assignment builder and quiz builder. Is this part of your school wide mark program? Are you able to collect and share data from tests easily with parents through email with this program?
I also appreciated your commet about the energizer bunny...it is very timely as the year goes on and we start getting tired...but it also applies to my area of growth I am focusing on and that is sharing my knowlege with co-workers...sometimes we just have to keep on going.
It was very clever of you to have a peer book in time for meetings or else they would never happen. What are you doing with the RIT scores? Where did you get your RIT scores from? Our school has just started MAP testing which gives a RIT score and we are discussing how to share this information with teachers?