Reflection of EDUC 6710

 My personal learning theory at the beginning of this course could be summarized into one phrase: “all about the student”. However, I did not know quite how to make it all about the student, instead of the instructor, and what tools I could integrate into my curriculum to help enhance student learning. Through this course I have learned a lot about various technological tools I can use in my classroom with my students. Before this course, I honestly did not think about the difference between instructional tools and learning tools. I assumed that by using, what I soon learned were “instructional tools”, the students were learning as much as they could. As this course has progressed, I have learned exactly how to connect learning, theory, and instruction.

As an immediate change I have already committed to every lesson, I have at least two learning tools apart of it. Now, I have not completely abandoned instructional tools because I do think there is a time and place for them. Some technological tools I have already used and will continue to use with my students is blogs, podcasts, wikis, voice threads, and brainstorming webs (using Inspiration software). Two technological tools I will use to enhance student learning in my classroom would be blogs and podcasts. Both tools can enhance student learning by cooperatively working with other students. I have seen such a difference already in my students’ ability to professionally communicate their thoughts about the content on my blog website. Also, the students enjoyed creating their own podcasts in Windows Movie Maker. The students were able to cooperatively work together, research information about their topic, gather pictures, video clips, and music to support their topic. The students, and I, were very proud of their final products. Even for weeks after, the students were still talking about their project and other groups’ projects too. I believe by students using learning tools to manipulate the content with, the students will remember the information for much longer.

I think as a life-long learner and staying up-to-date with the new developments in education, a professional educator must constantly set goals for themselves. Two long-term goals changes I have are: taking professional development classes about how I can learn to make my Promethean interactive board more of a learning tool than instructional tool, and how to consistently integrate technology into my curriculum in a proper way. In order for me to achieve my first goal, I need to take advantage and sign up for professional development courses through my school district. These courses are offered during the summer and the school year, and usually are no charge to teachers. My strategy to achieve my second goal is to plan farther in advance. Since some technology is new to me, I need to plan my units/lessons farther in advance so I can have time to familiarize myself with the technologies before introducing it to my students. My hope for the future is that I can become a technological-savvy master teacher so my students can become technologically advanced too.

Podcasting Assignment: Profiling the Students of Today

The following podcast is an interview of three of my students about how they use technology and what technology they use the most.  Enjoy!

Reaction to 21st Century Skills Website

After viewing the website, Partnership for 21^st Century Skills, I am very impressed with the amount of information and resources that are available. I love the framework “rainbow” that is illustrated. Everything that is in the illustration is exactly what our students need to learn for success in their future. One aspect I really like about the “framework illustration” is not just how it works for students, but ways that can help teachers to be prepared to teach our students the 21^st century skills. A lot of times, we as educators are told “you need to make sure your students can do this, this, and this”. Well, then teach me on how I should teach them those skills! A lot of times there is a disconnect of professional development for the teachers. One negative aspect is that I noticed under the “State Incentives”, I did not see my state listed. I wonder what it takes to have a state listed. I think overall this website is a great resource that I can use as an educator in several ways to teach my students the 21^st century skills they will need to be success in the present and future.

Utilizing Blogs in my Social Studies Classroom

In my classroom I could use a blog in several ways. Being that I teach 7th grade World History, blogs could be good for "Get Started" (bell ringer) assignments, collaborative projects, and/or journal writings. I believe that I would probably get my students to use a blog more for collaborative projects and journal writings. It would definitely be a place where students would interact about the content that we are currently studying about in class. For example, my students study about the Enlightenment philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I could set up a writing prompt where each student has to post a response to the prompt and read and respond to at least 3 classmates. Just like in this week's learning resources DVD, "Spotlight on Technology: Blogging in the Classroom", the teacher mentioned that before blogging she had to teach her students blogging etiquette. My hope is that I would be impressed with my students, like she was with her students, in the critical thinking responses they would have with each others' posts in using the blog. In addition to journal writing, I would post student work so not just students would get to see each others' work, but their parents would get to see the published work too. I strongly believe that blogging would enhance the learning in each lesson by several reasons. First, I believe this is a better way to keep students more accountable with their assignments because they know it is not just the teacher and them seeing the classwork anymore--it is everyone, including their peers and parents. Second, of course, any form of technology I believe improves the level of student engagement in the lesson, which in returns enhances their level of learning. Plainly I believe that by utilizing a blog in my classroom, a higher energy level for those students who normally may not get excited about school anymore, this would provide a renewed sense of learning and inspiration for them.

Reference:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Technology and Society. Baltimore: Author.

New and Emerging Technologies: Application 4--Spotlight on Emerging Technology: Online Learning in K-12 Schools

My Reflection Essay: UDL, DI, and Integrating Technology into my Classroom

From the beginning I knew that in order to integrate technology effectively it needs to be used seamlessly. Now, in reality, there will be technology malfunctions, but in the best interest of the teacher, technology needs to be purposefully implemented. There needs to be a reason that technology is used to enhance the content, not just to use technology to use it. However, my mindset about differentiated instruction has changed to an extent.
To be honest, at the beginning I had a vague understanding of what differentiated instruction was. I thought that in order to differentiate my lesson, I needed to have multiple activities going on. Through this course I have learned that it can be the same activities, but varied by readiness, interest, and learning style (Laureate Education, 2009). I do agree with the premise established in Week 1. Through the resources I have collected, I know now that differentiating my instruction is not has difficult as my original thoughts. The challenge I predict I will face as I try to implement UDL and DI into my classroom while using technology is how exactly I will accomplish it all in every lesson. After listening to teachers conversing over VoiceThread about being overwhelmed to implement it all, I know I was not the only educator with concerns. However, after learning more I know that it can be accomplished because it is easy to implement UDL and DI using technology with all their similarities with each other. I know that I have to collect more resources for differentiating instruction in a social studies classroom. For me, I believe success will come with practice and colleague assistance. Overall, I have learned more from this course than any other I have taken during my masters program. This course has in some ways supported my current theories and practices, and in others introduced me to new ideas and instructional strategies. I look forward to more practice and strengthening my curriculum based on my students’ needs.
I was able to learn about new resources for my classroom that I had never even heard of before, while collaborating with my classmates about what I wanted to integrate into my classroom and how this could be done. The social online communication has proven to help me integrate several of the resources learned about with my classmates. My 8th graders made Prezi projects about the American Revolution. The students were to research the causes and effects of the war, in addition, information about important American, British and South Carolinians during the war. The students were amazed! I also had my 7th graders use Prezi to present information they had learned during our Imperialism unit. I had students literally come up and hug me and say "thank you" for introducing Prezi to them. They were so tired of the same Powerpoint presentations. I have now integrated Prezi into how I lecture notes to my students. Instead of using PowerPoint, I now use Prezi.
Another resource I have implemented immediately in my classroom is Glogster. My students have used Glogster in several ways from presenting a regular homework assignment to presenting a research project about the American Revolution. I strongly believe that through these resources I have implemented in my classroom, I am also supporting the principles of UDL and DI.
Lastly, I have implemented Edmodo into my recent unit of study about World War I. My students like to refer to Edmodo has the “education facebook we are allowed to use at school”. I have posted various articles, websites, and computer games the students can have access to engage in the content. Edmodo is great because it is hands-on technology.
The experience of a constant weekly collaboration with my peers has tremendously helped me to expand my "toolbox" of resources for my students. Before this class I had only heard about UDL a little, and thought I knew what DI was. After this class, my eyes have been opened to UDL so much that I showed my VoiceThread presentation to my school faculty explaining how we can implement both UDL and DI at the same time. I received wonderful feedback of thanks from teachers. Overall, this online collaboration has helped me grow as a professional and integrate more useful ways of technology to help all my students learn.

Resources
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Reaching and engaging all
learners through technology. Baltimore: Author.

Final Reflection on my GAME plan

At the beginning of this course, I created a GAME plan to achieve success in integrating at least two indicators of the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) into my professional life. A GAME plan is when you set goals, take action to try and meet the goals, monitor your progress, and evaluating where you have met the goals or not (Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P., 2009, p.3). My GAME plan that I developed throughout this course involved collaboration between me and my students, the parents, the community, and other professionals. Each week I reflected on my GAME plan, monitored, evaluated it, and made necessary changes. The two indicators I chose to integrate were: indicator 3b: collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation and indicator 5a: participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning (NETS-T Standards). After creating my GAME plan, I thought that the first chosen indicator would not be difficult to achieve, but maybe the second indicator would be the more challenging one. As I am now reflecting upon the last eight weeks, actually the first indicator seemed to be the more challenging in some ways.

For the first indicator, I chose to set up a blog on my already established teacher webpage through Blackboard. This is how I would incorporate communication using technology with my students, parents, and the community. Throughout the process though, I discovered that my students and parents (with the student’s login information) could access my webpage, but members of the community could not. So as a result, I created a new teacher webpage using Edublogs.com. By using this new website, everyone was able to gain access to my teacher webpage where I posted class information, my PowerPoint notes, details for assignments and projects, blogs, and a new wiki project we are beginning after the holiday break.

For the second indicator, I joined an online professional learning network through http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/. Although, this network might be a good learning opportunity for some educators, I found that professionally I did not grow much from joining this particular network. One last minute change that I did make to achieve this indicator was joining Twitter. I know, I know, I told myself I would never join Twitter. I am a technology mentor for my school district, and in one of our monthly meetings, we had to report one action we made that month to grow as a professional. I was shocked when my colleagues mentioned that had joined Twitter for professional reasons. However, I have discovered in the short amount of time that I have been active with it, I have “followed” some people who I believe I might be able to benefit from professionally.

One new learning and “ah hah” moment I had was no matter how much I planned, I always had to make changes. I thought my original teacher webpage would work for the first indicator. Then, I thought that I would benefit professionally from the original professional learning network I joined. However, to achieve success for both indicators, I had to make big changes throughout the process. I discovered the important part was that I realized I had to make those changes in order to be successful in the long run. After making those changes, I found it much easier to achieve my goals I had set in the beginning.

I have made several changes to my instructional methods in teaching my social studies classes. One change I made was integrating more digital storytelling into my repertoire. The students had a blast with them! Another change was regarding how I plan my lessons now. Use to I would think of how I think my students should learn the material, but now I am beginning to think more in a middle school-age position. As my principal says “we must teach how they learn, not how we learn”. Lastly, I look at problem-based learning in a whole new light. In the beginning I was confused by the concept, but now I understand more of what PBL is and how to integrate it into my curriculum using technology.

Overall, I strongly believe that the GAME plan, the PBL content-area unit plan, and the course overall helped me to grow as a professional. I can honestly say that because of this course I feel that I have begun to make my transition from novice to master (well, kind of) teacher :).

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

National Education Technology Standards for Teachers: http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

Technology Integration in Education network: http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/