Course Reflection – EDUC-6714D-2 Reaching and Engaging All Learners through Technology.

As the first week in my new school year comes to a close I have to reflect on what I have learned the last 8 weeks and how I am using it in the classroom. When I first laid eyes on my little freshmen I was very excited! Not only do I get to have the pleasure of getting to know them and teaching them but I can do it in such a way that I feel I am really making a difference. My teaching practices have been altered since then end of last year. I now view the students as puzzles for me to figure out. What are their readiness levels, what interests them and what learning profiles lurk beneath those brand new clothes? My first job is to get to know these fresh-babies as I call them. Tomlinson points out that the better we know our students and all their proclivities, the better we will be able to engage and motivate them to learn (Laureate, 2009b). I have already given my classes the reading and interest inventories. Aside from that though I have talked to them and watched them, their behavior speaks louder than inventories. I have identified my very reluctant readers, my can’t keep quiet kids, the tapping feet and hands kids, the please show me what it looks like kids and all this will lead to better instruction on my part.

Some big concepts with regards to my students this past course was learning about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiated Instruction (DI). Universal Design for Learning emphasized breaking down educational barriers (Center for Applied Special Technology, 2009b). This idea prompted me to look at different aspects of instruction and ask myself if there were components to my teaching that were allowing barriers to exist. Rose and Meyer (2002) state that everyone deserves access to learning and I know it is my job to provide this access. I now think of delivering content using multiple ways and allowing the students to show their learning in multiple ways and finally keeping them interested and motivated using multiple avenues. My increased knowledge of DI is also incorporated into my schema of what makes up my students. It, too, has me contemplating how I can effectively deliver content, how the students can process the material in different ways and finally how the students can demonstrate learning in a way that respects their different learning styles.

I know that I cannot attend to all the students’ differences by myself and this is where technology plays a very important part. Technology is flexible. The options for attending to the vast array of teenagers that I see every day are amazing with technology. As an educator, you almost feel giddy when you find out about a new tool, link or application. I started my day on Monday by introducing myself, via the glog that I made, to my students. They were amazed. On Tuesday I thought, hey, let me show the students how easy it was to make and together, the students and I, made a glog about their class. I let each period contribute something to the poster. By the end of the day I had jazz music, a Bob Marley quote, and really cool text formatting describing the class. To say it was a hit would be an understatement. I could not have accomplished this endeavor prior to EDUC-6714D-2!! I also plan on using a few things that I gleaned from the Differentiation Station social network that I was a part of. The teachers that contributed to the resources on this site came up with some pretty cool tools. Some of these are:
a spelling site, a vocabulary site , a site to recommend books for my students, a site for really good graphic organizers and lastly, a site to generate flash cards to study with . These are the resources that I have designated to use as a part of my instructional practice today to better reach my students. One more new tool I want to mention is a site that facilitates creating a digital book. I have my students craft stories as a regular part of my curriculum and now they can turn these into digital stories. This is a very good thing.

With the many ways to be flexible using technology it is incumbent on me to not inundate my students or myself with too many new strategies, tools, or applications. Tomlinson (2009b) promotes growing slowly. I will heed this advice because I do not want to use technology just for the sake of using it; I want it to be purposeful and meaningful so that the students are met where they are and as they are to increase learning and break down educational barriers. This will be an exciting year indeed. As a side note, I want to share that it is my intention to communicate effective instructional practices I have gleaned from this course with my colleagues. Let’s reach those students!

Ruth Crawford

Resources:
Center for Applied Special Technology. (2009). UDL guidelines, version 1.0. Retrieved from http://www.udlcenter.orgaboutudl/udlguidelines.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009b). Introduction to differentiated instruction. Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore: Author.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

Final thoughts on GAME plan and inclusion of technology

My goal in my GAME plan was twofold. I aspired to start a class wiki and I endeavored to connect with other educators via blogs and learn more about technology in the classroom. With regards to the class wiki, I hit a home run. The wiki is up and running and the students are seeing it as a viable place to go for information and communication. I learned that instituting a new technology tool is a process. I needed to not only create the wiki but think of ways to utilize it and do much poking, prodding and cajoling to get the students on board. My students are working on a power point project and I am able to post the instructions for the project as well as have a page devoted to problems and a reflection page. These components are vehicles of communication that allow the students to connect to their peers in an unusual way. I have found that they will not turn to this form of communication unless reminded to daily. This is to be expected though as this is so new to the students. I am very pleased with the class wiki. I will incorporate this tool every year that I am in the classroom. I will also show my fellow educators the efficacy of using this tool and encourage them to use one as well.
Speaking of fellow educators, this brings me to my second goal. I have ear marked or subscribed to several blogs that I feel are giving feed back and good information on incorporating technology in the classroom. I had to hunt and peck to locate good sources. The GAME plan helped me to persevere with my actions until I felt I had some really useful blogs.
I appreciate the GAME plan process. It allowed me to stay focused. When a person has to generate a goal it creates an environment of learning. Having to articulate the action that must take place to achieve the goal gives wings to the goal. Finally, success can be felt as the goal is monitored and evaluated. Going forward, I anticipate using the GAME plan process as I continue to use wikis in my teaching practice and as I turn to the teacher blogs that I have subscribed to for useful information on technology in the classroom.

Using the game plan to promote NETS-S

Teachers need to use the GAME plan strategy with every endeavor in the classroom. GAME stands for Goal, Action, Monitor and Evaluate. It is paramount that educators strive to incorporate technology where it is possible in the curriculum. To do this it takes creativity. It is this creativity that we need to model for the students. We should not add the technology component just for the components sake but rather to enhance instruction. I believe if an educator shares the process and efficacy of having a goal, taking action, monitoring their progress and evaluating their success the students will incorporate this strategy as well. When we are talking about adding a new piece to our teaching repertoire it is especially important that we stick to the GAME plan so that we know our inclusion of technology is the right choice.
The NETS-S standards stipulate that the students need to be creative and innovative, collaborate with others from peers to those of other cultures from around the globe, develop research and information fluency, use digital resources and tools to identify and solve authentic problems and to exercise ethical behavior with their use of technology. These are skills that can be taught by the classroom teacher and using the GAME plan will ensure success.
The NETS-T standards dictate that teachers need to demonstrate creativity, design lessons that explore real-world issues while solving authentic problems, promote reflection using digital tools, model ethical use of digital information and technology, always strive to be a lifelong learner and to promote the effective use of digital tools and resources in the professional community.
Just as it is important to have a goal of incorporating digital technology for various instructional reasons, it is also important to be mindful of when technology is a good fit and when it is not. Going forward I aim to maintain vigilance to the ever-changing landscape of technology so that I can best meet the needs of my students and their NETS-S standards. I know that I will have to use the GAME plan to accomplish this.

Ruthie

Evaluation of Progress

Evaluation of Progress
The goals in my game plan have moved in the right direction. I have added some 21st century skills to my teaching repertoire and this is wonderful news. As with any new strategy or technique an educator adds to the classroom there is a time of adjustment and seeing what works and doesn’t work with the students. Thus far, I have not run into any problems with my GAME plan but that doesn’t mean problems won’t arise at some point.
What I have learned so far is that having a class wiki is not only convenient for me but convenient for the students as well. I have learned that the generation of a wiki should be done at the beginning of the year so that it can be built upon during the year. I have learned that some students take to visiting a wiki for class resources like a duck to water and other students do not. Finally, I have learned how to construct the wiki and this was not rocket science which is good news for promotion of this tool to other educators.
The goal that I am still working on is to encourage other educators to see the efficacy of using class wikis so they too can incorporate 21st century skills into their classroom instruction. As I shared earlier, my experience of creating a class wiki was innocuous and I will have my wiki to show as an example for other teachers.
There are so many technology tools out there that I can avail myself of that I will be kept busy exploring the possibilities for a long time. I want to use epals, ning, ming, do a flat classroom project and try to always be cognizant of where in my instruction I could use a technology based tool as either a collaboration component or as a means to create a product.

Blog Effectiveness

Old wiki, new uses... the utility of the wiki is growing. In terms of assessing how effective my actions were in helping me to meet my goals I would say I'd give myself an A. The wiki is up and running and the students are accessing it. I feel a sense of accomplishment and going forward I know that I could repeat the process for whatever my instructional goal might be.
If I had to think of a question I might still have or anything I still might need to learn it would be in the area of how many different uses the wiki could be used for. I am starting a PBL project and I will post instructions for the project and use the wiki for a journal reflection spot at the end of the project. I know that as my instructional calendar unfolds I will continue to pull in uses for the wiki. I wish I had started the wiki at the beginning of the year instead of at the end. It is exciting to think of class wiki's being a solid part of my teaching repertoire. I am telling other teachers how they could incorporate it in their classes.

Ruthie

How is the Wiki experience you ask....

All in all I'd have to say that this process has been fairly innocuous. I am happy with the site and have found it to be convenient on several fronts. Instead of putting my information up on the board I now pull up the Wiki and have it on the overhead. All the information is there and they will see it again on their home computer if they chose to access the site from home. They seem to like the word Wiki, it is kinda catchy. I end all my classes now with check the wiki!!!! Tomorrow I have a test and if a student doesn't do well I can say, "Why didn't you check the Wiki?". I can conveniently put reminders on the Wiki as well. I want them to do Teenbiz at home but of course I am not home with them but I can post it in large font on the Wiki and there I am in their home saying loudly, "Do Teenbiz!!", cool. I have figured out how to lock the home page so that students cannot edit it, nice. I had a student erase some information last week and I was able to bust him by looking at the updates tab to see he had deleted a lot of info but now I have the page locked, so yeah, that won't happen again. I don't have any questions yet but I am about to expand the use of the wiki as I start a power point project and I want to post information and possibly a page dedicated to ideas.
So far so good, I'm lovin' technology!

Ruthie

90 kids on Wiki

Just had to share...90 students on wiki and they are lovin' it!!

resources and information needed for Game Plan!

As previously posted, my wiki site for the classroom is up and running. This morning I had four students who joined the site. I have 190 students but only 65 have an email address that they need to register with on the site. I went over the classwiki yesterday with all my classes and will continue to strongly encourage them to join the site.
Insofar as resources and information needed for this stage of the game I am relying on critical thinking. A wiki site is like an undersea shipwreck. You have to poke your head in a lot of places before you find something that you want. I saw a lot of gadgets I could put on the page but do I want them...for now I am satisfied with how it looks.
The second element of the game plan involves connecting with other educators via the internet to garner creative ideas. I have googled teacher blogs and have explored many interesting blogs. I need to narrow it down to technology blogs however. This is quite an interesting road to be on. The resources I garner are from each blog. As I see who has subscribed to certain blogs I explore their blogs. The maze has funny, sad and informative stops. I need to focus on technology as this endeavor can really eat up the time.

Ruth

Up and Kinda Running

My taking action this week was demonstrated by creating a class blog and class wiki. At first I wanted to just post information to give the students a chance to look at their vocabulary words for the week in another place instead of just on the board. Many students say that they did not see the words despite the words being on the board all week. I figured that I could post them on-line and then the students' ability to excuse away their laziness would at the very least be diminished. Hence, the blog was created. I fooled around with it some and then thought it would be neat if the students could post things on the site and wikis are much better for this so I created a wiki. I made a page for each period. I start my classes off by asking the students if they have used their vocabulary words outside of the classroom and now I can have them post their use of the words on their class page instead.
Today I had the bulk of them write down their email addresses for me so I could invite them onto the class wiki. I am excited to see how this is going to work. My class wiki can be found at www.crawfordclass.wetpaint.com
I think this is going to be one of those things that will take on a life of its own.

Ruthie

Monitor and Evaluate

In considering how I may monitor and evaluate my two goals, the first endeavor of a class blog would be an on-going monitoring and maybe evaluating after a period of time to see if students are utilizing it in a effective manner. My second goal would be monitored according to how many pertinent blogs I can garner. The evaluation comes in with going forward with the blogs I have found or looking for new blogs. I would take a step back and look at the information I have gleaned and how useful it is. This monitoring and evaluating rounds out my GAME PLAN.
Ruth

Game Plan for strenthening confidence with teaching technology

The National Educational Technology Standards and Performance Indicators for Teachers list 20 areas that effective teachers need to be able to model and apply. Some of the standards and indicators I presently use and others need some practice and polishing. Two indicators that I would like to strengthen my confidence in are 3.c. – Model Digital-Age Work and Learning, communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats and 5.a. – Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership, participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.
With regards to the first standard, my Goal is to create a classroom wiki. I have created one in a previous course at Walden but have not pursued it further. I remember that the process was a bit daunting at first but towards the end of the course the process flowed easier. I admit to being nervous at the prospect. I would love to use the wiki at a place to store curriculum updates, share information with the students, and have them share information with me. The Action I need to take is to create the wiki. I will re-visit the course where I made the wiki to look for notes I took regarding the process. There are websites that host wikis and I remember liking wet paint so I will most likely go with that one. I do not anticipate this being painless.
The second standard involves participating in global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning. My Goal is to subscribe to some teacher blogs that pertain to technology. I will start my quest at google. It will take some time to pinpoint some blogs that have good, creative ideas but it will be time well spent. I am a high school teacher and my subject is reading and research so that will narrow my search some. I believe that being creative is a pursuit that should be modeled daily by teachers so it is my goal to find teachers that are creative and look for new ideas to use in my classroom with regards to technology.

Reflection on Information Literacy Skills in the Classroom

Reflection on Information Literacy Skills in the Classroom
At the end of a course surrounding information literacy skills I am asked to reflect on any striking revelation I have had. An issue that comes to mind is realizing how important it is for me to stress to the students that they need to be critical readers of the Web. What this means exactly is that I need to explain to my students that what they are reading, albeit published material, may be biased or, even still, untrue. This is a factor that they do not have to worry about with published books. The internet, however, is a completely different animal. The strategies I learned in my graduate course will go a long way towards helping my students properly evaluate a website.

When constructing an inquiry project for this course I was involved in helping the students to generate a question for the project, elucidate how to effectively find good sources, evaluate those sources and finally to synthesize their information into idea they could call their own. I will depend on the topic + focus stratagem to not only help the students better concentrate on what their question should look like but as a tactic that is useful to find sources on the internet when plugged into a search engine. This is a valuable skill that has helped me in the classroom and will be incorporated into every inquiry project I create both on line and off line.

Finally, I am passionate about sharing my new found information literacy skills with my colleagues. We have a Professional Learning Community meeting once a week and I would like to put together a series of lessons wherein I can pass along all the effective tools and skills that I have learned in this class. There are numerous handouts that I can share as well as putting forth the experience I have gained from completing an inquiry based unit that involved the students researching on the internet. I would not be surprised if some of my colleagues are in the dark regarding checking for the validity of websites. Unfortunately we live in a time when you have to demonstrate rigor towards safety and cannot trust information as easily as we once could. I am looking forward to generating these lessons and passing them along to my colleagues.

Ruth Crawford

21st Century Classroom

As I reflect on the educator that was in the classroom prior to immersion in technology and the educator that will stand in my shoes come the new school year I am very pleased. I am pleased because intrinsically it is every educators' desire to hone their craft and improve pedagogy and I believe this technology course has done this. I have felt a swift kick in the right direction. I have seen how the roll of the teacher can be transformed from lecturer to facilitator. This creates a classroom that is learner centered as they move their ideas from their heads to the world. What an important concept that will help the students see that what they have to say will move beyond the teacher's desk to the world outside of the classroom and is relevant to others. I hope to create a link between my own urban students to other urban students in the country to see how many experiences they share and to create a sense of community. It has always been my contention that people have much in common we just need to get a dialog started to elucidate this.

One glance at my favorites tab will leave no doubt that this is a road with no u-turns. I am following blogs, twitters, and wikis of educators I have never met but whose council I seek. I can commiserate with my fellow colleagues in my course to see how they are progressing. This collaboration was stressed throughout the course and the efficacy of this skill is felt in my own endeavors so I will pass this along to my students.

It is an important goal as an educator to increase critical thinking skills and it is more than apparent to see how learning through the medium of technology satisfies this goal. With this in mind, one long term goal I have with regards to technology is to develop a unique and challenging project. The students will have to problem solve and collaborate on this project but the conundrum is to find a problem that is relevant to their lives and that will produce high interest to better bring their motivation on board. I will have to realize greater proficiency with the workings of a wiki site but I have all summer to hone that skill.

Another goal I have is to bring the educators at my high school into the arena of using 21st century skills with their students. This will no doubt require voluntary workshops but I believe that my excitement generated through my own use of blogs and wikis will garner the enthusiasm needed to bring other educators to the table. I have several one on one meetings scheduled with the principle this summer and if I can win her over then my battle is half won.

As this course comes to a close, I am grateful that I have the rest of the summer to investigate the inner workings of technology to get a grasp on best practices with regards to technology in my classroom. My goal is to keep the focus on learning standards and student achievement. Technology is an efficient tool to facilitate this learning.

Podcast on Students' use of technology

http://teacherruth.podbean.com/2009/06/04/prevelence-of-technology/

After much anxiety I have managed to upload my pod cast to a hosting site. Podbean. I can copy and paste my audio into another website but the url is 10 lines long so I posted a link to my podblog if you will and you all can listen to it there.

I neglected to mention the demographics - Title One School. I look for my student's names in the local section of the paper every day, most days they are not there thank goodness.

Enjoy the podcast, it was made with blood, sweat and tears :)

Ruthie

Link to the short movie....

http://www.schooltube.com/video/36281/A-Brief-History-of-Technology-in-Education

Give this a look see, it is very interesting. We have come a long way baby, now let's avail ourselves.

A Brief History of Technology in Education

This short video is an interesting look at where technology has traveled in the last 20 years.
It is written by Adam Scott Bellow. What will we, as educators, be using in the next 20 years I dare ask.
Ruth

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

The website can be found at http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ **
I can appreciate the mission behind this company's stance to create collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders to address the needs of 21st century children which are my children and your children.
They point out that every child in America needs 21st century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century. They claim that there is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces. They espouse that to successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills.
How do they address these concerns? They have well over 500 resources and tools that can be utilized to foster 21st century skills which are touted as being:

Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills) , thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity), interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility), global awareness, financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options, and civic literacy.

They have a lot of big companies behind them such as AOL, Verizon, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, the National Education Association and even the U.S. Department of Education.

This site seems to take its job pretty seriously. I believe in the mission as I am aware that technology is only going to become better, faster, smaller and inundate every facit of our lives one day. I do not believe that day is too far off. I will avail myself of the information on the site to better equip my students to possess 21st century skills. There is a on-line summit in June that I have signed up for and it will be fascinating to be a part of the global conversation regarding 21st century skills. They will address important education reform initiateves concerning 21st C.S. I do believe that as far as technology is concerned, the United States are laggards. As a somewhat new educator, I have seen very little technology integration into the classroom. Where does the disconnect lie? Is it the lack of funding? Lack of vision? I don't know. I do know, however, that I can make a difference in my own classroom.

Yeah! I can blog!!

Good news blog fans, my principle gave me the A.O.K. and thumbs up! Technology kind of scares her and I assured her that I could moderate everything coming and going from the blog site so she was happy with that. We all know how kids these days are savvy enough to corrupt what should remain innocent and I think she didn't want that liability.
I can now start working on my summer reading blog. Thanks for the encouragement!
Ruthie

Technology in my classroom

I would like to create E-portfolios for my 9th and 10th grade intensive reading students. I believe it will be a good learning tool. They will be able to see where they started with their writing and where they developed to by the end of the year. Writing is such an important aspect of being a good reader.
I could also create on-line reading passages for my students to read and react to. Another thing I would like to do is post tasks on a classroom blog to carry out project-based learning tasks with my students. I think this would be very convenient and save my students from having to ask for the assignment paper over and over again.
Lastly, I would like to create a classroom newsletter. I could do this on the classroom blog as well. Now, I just need to get the principle's permission to have a class blog.
Ruth Crawford

No Blogging

Hello everyone!
I send out an email to the principle's secretary asking her to forward a message to the faculty soliciting any one's help with blogging. I get a curt message back: The principle wants to see you. Ut oh am I in trouble - "The principle wants to see you" always has an ominous tone to it. I rush down to her office after school and alas she has left already. I steel myself for possible bad news and sheepishly ask if I were in trouble but tried to sound like I was kidding. Well, (Barb - the nice secretary)- says, she does not want you blogging in the classroom. She specifically said no blogging at Mainland. Okee Dokee I say, I'll see her tomorrow. Oh she won't be here tomorrow, you will have to see her Friday. Guess what, she left before 7th period was over again.
So there I am, no blogging at Mainland. I think I shall put forth a good pro and con list and see what she says. There are ways to moderate what gets posted to and from the blog am I right? If that is her fear I should be able to ameliorate her with that news. I certainly read enough on other educator's blogs on how they use blogging in the classroom. It can't be that harmful can it be? While it may be innocuous in the elementary level maybe high schoolers can't be trusted with it. Any advice before I see the principle Monday would be greatly appreciated.