As
I continue to carry out my GAME plan, I am still looking for new ways
to incorporate technology into my curriculum to better engage my
students with the lessons and I am slowly beginning to find more
online resources to help me stay connected to changes in technology
and education. So far I have been able to apply my prior knowledge
of technology strategies to better develop lessons for my students
and I am working on integrating more video streaming to aid my visual
learners. I have learned that it helps to model practically
everything I require my students to do to give them examples of what
the assignment should look like upon completion and to demonstrate
the learning goals I have for them. This week's learning resources
focused on customizing student learning activities to benefit diverse
learners in the classroom. According to Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer
(2009), “Technology can be a tremendous asset that helps teachers
support the diverse learning needs of children” (p. 107). In my
experience, providing students with more opportunities to use
technology to complete assignments does benefit all learning styles,
especially when the students are given a choice in the media they are
able to use. As referenced by Cennamo, et al., (2009), “By
offering choices of media and tools within the scope of your required
content, you are supporting students' affective networks” (p.120).
For future assignments, I have thought about how I can in corporate
the different learning styles of my students into my lessons and
project requirements. I plan to allow for more collaborative
groupings and provide ample time for my students in the lab. I know
that integrating technology can be challenging at times, but I also
know it can help to improve the learning outcomes of the students I
teach. To continue implementing and applying the ISTE standard:
NETS-T 3- “Model Digital Age Work and Learning”, I must continue
to seek advice from my colleagues, media specialist, and tech
support, along with researching online resources like streaming
videos and interactive activities to my lessons.
In
reference to my second learning goal in accordance with ISTE
standard: NETS-T 5- “Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership”,
I am working on advancing my knowledge by researching more technology
and becoming more familiar with the tools introduced in the Cennamo
text. There are many digital tools I have either never heard of or
have never worked with, so it is important for me to discover what
these tools are used for and how I can incorporate them into my
lessons. In the next couple of weeks of this course, we will be
integrating a plan using wikis; this is something I know very little
about and I do look forward to working with this tool. I have not
researched as much as I would like to for this component of my GAME
plan at this time, but I do plan to do more in the weeks ahead.
According to Cennamo, et al., (2009). “As a teacher, you develop
learning goals for your students that allow them to obtain the skills
and knowledge required by curricula and standards” (p.121). As
important as is to set goals for our students, it is also important
for teachers to set and maintain goals for ourselves.
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.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you are making great strides in implementing more technology uses into your everyday classroom practices. Cennamo (et al., 2009) reminds us that flexibility in the classroom can help the students to achieve the goals we have for them, as long as we realize that we have to do it for the kids’ sake. I like the charge you are taking in bringing more video and visual aids to assist your visual learners in understanding the content being presented to them. You have taken the flexibility idea and have really brought it into your classroom with how you mention modeling the assignments for the students. Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001) taught us that providing a visual of what you want your students to accomplish will help them to complete the same assignment better than simply telling them what you want them to do. Great job on bringing modeling further into the classroom, which can be tedious and time consuming, but what works for the students is what we have to provide for them. Lastly, I like that you are looking into ways to bring technology into the classroom projects and assessments to further integrate into the curriculum. I would suggest checking out research on iPads and laptop use in the classroom for projects and assessment techniques. We use iPads and the app Socrative which provides alternatives for test-taking with pencils and paper, a flexibility choice that Cennamo (et al., 2009) says can help affirm our students skills when we offer them choices for their learning.
As for your second ISTE NETS-T goal, I applaud your interest in wikis, as even though I consider myself a “techie” with good knowledge of all things technological, I am stumped by using wikis. I see their potential in collaborating with classmates to work on a research project and having them all able to access a wiki and make the necessary changes as each one finds something new to add. If you find out more about this, would you please fill me in, too? I am going to go search for some wiki information directly after this. Cennamo (et al., 2009) and his use of flexibility and choices can also be turned around and applied to us, as educators, and I am glad that you are taking the next steps to professionally grow and learn new things outside of our comfort zones. When we work to better ourselves and our skill sets, we are helping our students, too.
Great job this week, in my opinion.
Ryan McGinnis
Resources
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.
Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteYou mention in your post the importance of modelling everything to students and providing examples to students. This is so important when students are being taught to use anything, including technology. I think we sometimes assume that because the children we are teaching today are digital natives, they will know how to use the tools and applications we are working with. In reality, they may have never actually posted to a blog or learned how to effectively search for information. We need to make sure that whenever we introduce any technology or tools within the classroom that we effectively show student how to use it. Providing students step by step instructions along with model of how to go through an assignment or use complete an activity will allow students to learn how to accomplish the task and move them towards becoming more independence (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). Our ultimate goals is for students to learn to use technology to support their learning, so we need to ensure they are learning to use it as effectively as possible.
Nicole
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI have learned over the years how important and effective modeling is, especially when it comes to writing skills. Along with modeling how to write a lab report, I also provide my students with examples of exceptional and bad lab reports. Attached with each lab is a rubric enabling them to see the requirements to achieve mastery. It is only natural for us to assume that others know how to perform a task when it is second nature to us. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. The same goes for utilizing technology within the classroom. Modeling technology use allows our students to become familiar and comfortable with the process (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009).
I too am trying to incorporate more video streaming within my classroom that increases learning comprehension. I have a classroom YouTube page and post class demonstrations, student presentations, and recently an extension of a lab experiment. I will be posting more videos in the future to be analyzed by my students and hopefully others. Some class demonstrations are not easy to analyze on the spot, thus saving it on a video will allow for future viewing. I recently read that YouTube now allows for quizzes to be inserted within videos http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/21/youtube-interactive-quizzes-to-videos-beta/. This is a great concept that can go a long way. I imagine having videos broken up into segments with questions in between before moving further on in the video. This means more focus on the learning process rather than watching a video and receiving an answer without any thinking involved. This will force the viewer/student to slow down and make predictions/calculations/short answers based on their prior knowledge to continue with their learning experience. This is definitely something that I will dabble into as I continue my GAME plan.
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.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteThere were factors in your post that I could relate with. Firstly, I agree with the fact that there were many digital tools that I did not know about. I too meet with the media specialist and tech-support person to understand how to use certain tools. Using resources to help learn how to use technology is what is needed to be successful (Cennamo et al, 2009). I find that many times teachers desire to use more technology, but normally steer away from this goal because of the fear of learning new material. However, teachers should model how to use different technology by familiarizing with the technology so that the comfort level will be increased (Cennamo et al, 2009). Because you are an English teacher, I am sure there are many various methods that you can incorporate technology to allow students to learn. Video streaming software and digital story telling tools may be useful for students to use in your class. You could allow students to create their own stories by promoting their creativity. Have you ever used digital story telling tools? This is a form of technology that I personally need to increase my knowledge with. I wish you well in your venture.
Reference
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.