The following podcast is an interview of three of my students about how they use technology and what technology they use the most. Enjoy!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Reaction to 21st Century Skills Website
After viewing the website, Partnership for 21st 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 21st 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 21st century skills they will need to be success in the present and future.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
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.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Technology and Society. Baltimore: Author.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
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/
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/
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Evaluating my GAME plan
To my group: I am so sorry that my post did not go through. Below is what I thought I posted last Wednesday night (before everything with my internet connection--or lack there of since then--started happening). Thank goodness I saved this in a Word document :)
My actions so far have achieved some of my GAME plan goals. First, I set up a new free educator blog site so parents, students, and the community can have free access to it: http://abroberts08.edublogs.org/ By creating this new webpage everyone is able to have access to it. My former classroom webpage was created through Blackboard, where it is password protected. The only people that could gain access was my students (and parents through using the student's log in information). However, I did not want to leave out easy access for parents and the community so that is why I chose to create a new webpage. This new webpage through Edublogs.org has allowed me to gain closer achievement to my first indicator: "collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation".
My second indicator was not so forthcoming though. I was able to find a personal learning network to join, but unfortunately did not find it very beneficial. The link to the network is: http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/ I constantly was having to ask for my membership to be changed from pending to a full member. The administrator of this personal network was very slow and late in getting back with me about my membership. Unfortunately, this put me behind on gaining access to the blogs, discussion boards, chats, videos, and other cool resources (like free podcasts!). My whole point in wanting to join this network was to work on reaching my goal for my second indicator: "participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning".
After all this being said, I believe that for the most part, my actions were somewhat effective in trying to reach my GAME plan goals. One lesson that I have learned that I can apply to my instructional methods in integrating technology in the classroom is you have to be very patient. When using technology, not always is your first or second plan of action going to work. After creating a teacher webpage, then finding out not everyone (including my Walden classmates) could gain access to it, then creating a second teacher webpage, and finally trying to fight the battle of becoming a member of my PNL...I never thought that I would have to jump through so many loops. At this time I do not have any questions about how to continue with my GAME plan. The only thing I need is more time to work on my newly created teacher webpage. In addition, I am still awaiting the verification email saying I have been granted full access to my PLN. One way that I am going to adjust my plan to fit my current needs is I am now on the search for a new PLN. Instead of waiting, I am currently in the process of searching for a new PLN. Any suggestions?
My actions so far have achieved some of my GAME plan goals. First, I set up a new free educator blog site so parents, students, and the community can have free access to it: http://abroberts08.edublogs.org/ By creating this new webpage everyone is able to have access to it. My former classroom webpage was created through Blackboard, where it is password protected. The only people that could gain access was my students (and parents through using the student's log in information). However, I did not want to leave out easy access for parents and the community so that is why I chose to create a new webpage. This new webpage through Edublogs.org has allowed me to gain closer achievement to my first indicator: "collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation".
My second indicator was not so forthcoming though. I was able to find a personal learning network to join, but unfortunately did not find it very beneficial. The link to the network is: http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/ I constantly was having to ask for my membership to be changed from pending to a full member. The administrator of this personal network was very slow and late in getting back with me about my membership. Unfortunately, this put me behind on gaining access to the blogs, discussion boards, chats, videos, and other cool resources (like free podcasts!). My whole point in wanting to join this network was to work on reaching my goal for my second indicator: "participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning".
After all this being said, I believe that for the most part, my actions were somewhat effective in trying to reach my GAME plan goals. One lesson that I have learned that I can apply to my instructional methods in integrating technology in the classroom is you have to be very patient. When using technology, not always is your first or second plan of action going to work. After creating a teacher webpage, then finding out not everyone (including my Walden classmates) could gain access to it, then creating a second teacher webpage, and finally trying to fight the battle of becoming a member of my PNL...I never thought that I would have to jump through so many loops. At this time I do not have any questions about how to continue with my GAME plan. The only thing I need is more time to work on my newly created teacher webpage. In addition, I am still awaiting the verification email saying I have been granted full access to my PLN. One way that I am going to adjust my plan to fit my current needs is I am now on the search for a new PLN. Instead of waiting, I am currently in the process of searching for a new PLN. Any suggestions?
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