As my current course at Walden University, EDUC 6714: Reaching and Engaging All Learners through Technology, draws to a close, I believe it is crucial to reflect upon the learning experiences in which I have engaged throughout the class that will impact my ability to use technology to differentiate instruction for the diverse learners in my classroom. Smith and Throne (2007) emphasized the importance of differentiating content, process, and/or product according to students’ unique readiness levels, interests, and/or learning profiles. According to the insights I have gained in the course, particularly in reference to the principles of Universal Design for Learning (Center for Applied Special Technology, 2009), there are countless forms of digital tools and technologies available for educators to utilize in the quest to implement the curricular flexibility our students need and deserve. Fortunately, as part of my academic journey in this course, I had the opportunity to participate in a Differentiation Station social network with several of my colleagues in which we shared some of the resources we have discovered in our searches for information about differentiation and UDL. What follows is a description of how I plan to use some of the tools recommended by my peers to empower me to adjust my instructional practices relating to the integration of technology as an aid in customizing the learning experiences in which my students engage in my classroom.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing concepts I learned about during the eight weeks of my current course was the importance of differentiating according to students’ learning profiles, particularly their various multiple intelligences (Smith & Throne, 2007). One outstanding way to implement the customization of instruction in this area is by making use of Tic-Tac-Toe choice boards, such as the ones located at https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/edyburn/www/tictactoe.html (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, n.d.). This resource, posted by one of my peers on our social network site, contains numerous choice boards; however, the book report option is the tool that captured my attention the most. I have already utilized this Tic-Tac-Toe board in my classroom within the last two weeks when I gave it to my students as the culminating product for their book projects during their current term. The options on the board, which are varied according to students’ multiple intelligences, can be enhanced through the use of technologies such as video cameras, word processing software, and online comic strip generators. When students’ unique learning profiles are honored, their level of motivation increases. Therefore, by using Tic-Tac-Toe choice boards, such as the ones on the aforementioned site, in combination with supplementary technologies, I can reach and engage all of my diverse learners.
As a reading and language arts teacher, one of the standards I must ensure my students understand relates to poetry and figurative language (Georgia Department of Education, 2005). In the past, I have assessed my students’ understanding of this aspect of the curriculum by requiring them to create poetry books in which they would complete their own pieces and compile them together into books using designer paper and other art supplies. Though this culminating project has always been a success, I have gained the realization throughout my current course that technology can and should be used as a flexible tool that allows students multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement (Center for Applied Special Technology, 2009). Thus, one tool the Differentiation Station social network introduced me to that I would like to immediately implement as part of my poetry unit would be Glogster (2010). Using this website, students can create posters that allow them to express themselves using not only their poetic words, but with images, videos, and music as well. In addition to being a tool of powerful engagement, Glogster would also benefit my students who are strong in the visual, musical, intrapersonal, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences as well (Smith & Throne, 2007). As a teacher who is striving to utilize technology as a method for customizing instruction for my students, Glogster is certainly a resource I could envision myself using with my students in multiple ways as we work on various aspects of our reading and language arts curriculum.
Though I have worked toward differentiation in the past, the knowledge I have gained in my current course has inspired me to make sure that I have a strong arsenal of tools to use as I endeavor to make immediate adjustments that can help meet my students’ unique learning needs. ClassTools.net (2010) is yet another spectacular resource I discovered on my social network thanks to one of my colleagues. This site contains numerous templates that can be used to differentiate activities according to my students’ readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles (Smith & Throne, 2007). For instance, the interactive hamburger graphic organizer can be incorporated to aid students with organizing their ideas for paragraphs if they are at a lower readiness level or for entire essays if the learners are more advanced. The word generator tool can be used to aid with flexible grouping as well. These are just a few of the many ways I can visualize using the templates available on this resource to assist me as I strive to make quick, yet effective customizations as part of my instructional delivery for and assessment of the diverse students in my classroom.
Reflecting on what I have learned about differentiation and Universal Design for Learning during the last eight weeks, I am appreciative of the amazing insights I have gained from my colleagues through the sharing of resources on our social network. I am looking forward to utilizing these digital tools in the quest to reach and engage each of my unique learners. I am quite confident that the results of using these sources as aids in the differentiation process will be reflected in the success my students experience.
References
Center for Applied Special Technology. (2009). UDL guidelines, version 1.0. Retrieved from http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines
ClassTools.net. (2010). Create interactive flash tools/games for education. Retrieved from http://classtools.net/
Georgia Department of Education. (2005). Georgia Performance Standards. Atlanta, GA: Author. Retrieved from https://www.georgiastandards.org/_layouts/GeorgiaStandards/GSOSearch/SearchResults.aspx?op=1&t=Standards&kw=&g=6,7,8&sid=&sn=&ss=GSOSubject&f=&d=
Glogster. (2010). Poster yourself: Text, images, music, and video. Retrieved from http://www.glogster.com
Smith, G., & Throne, S. (2007). Differentiating instruction with technology in K-5 classrooms. Belmont, CA: International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. (n.d.). Using tic-tac-toe to manage differentiated instruction. Retrieved from https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/edyburn/www/tictactoe.html
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Reflection: The GAME Doesn't Stop Here
During the last eight weeks of learning experiences in the EDUC 6713: Integrating Technology across the Content Areas course, I have gained a wealth of new knowledge that I am confident will enhance my strengths as a classroom teacher, while also benefiting my students as content learners and technology users. At the beginning of the course, I established goals I wanted to focus on to increase the integration of technology in my instruction. To provide structure in my quest to achieve these goals, I created a GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) in which I articulated my goals, developed an action plan for achieving them, and then monitored and evaluated my progress. My goals, which were to implement technology-based assessments and to establish a collaborative relationship with another classroom to foster my students’ cultural and global awareness (National Education Standards for Teachers, 2008), were powerful enough that I know they would make a difference for my students, but also focused enough through the development of my GAME plan that I knew they would be approachable. By setting a strong action plan, engaging in learning during the course, and using the information I obtained to revise my plan as needed, I am confident that the GAME plan I developed and followed throughout this class will having a transforming impact on my classes once the new school year begins.
By following my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) during the last eight weeks, I learned many things. Not only have I become aware of the technology knowledge, skills, and attitudes I should possess as a twenty-first century teacher, but I have also learned how to successfully chart a course for myself so that I can successfully become more proficient in these areas. As I have stated previously in my blog posts, perhaps the most powerful concept I will be taking away from the GAME plan process is that integrating technology in my classroom to the maximum extent possible does not happen overnight. I have learned that I am a person who gets incredibly enthused about the new things I learn, but then when trying to implement them all at once, I become overwhelmed and go back to my traditional methods. The GAME plan process has taught me to start small with one or two goals at a time and follow them through completely. My students will benefit from the successful implementation of technology through my achievement with those goals, and then with time more goals can established. Therefore, as the new school year approaches my mindset regarding technology use in my instructional practice will be to remember that quality is more important than quantity. By setting one or two goals for myself, even if I implement them during each nine week period, I can achieve up to eight new goals by the end of the school year. I cannot help but be excited by those possibilities!
Focusing on the immediate future in my classroom, the work I have put in to my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) will definitely pay off once the school year begins. I have already been using some of my down time this summer to work on taking the assessments I already have and devising ways that I can integrate technology into them for the benefit of my students. Furthermore, I am moving along in the process with a fellow reading/language arts teacher to develop our collaborative blog. We will be studying the novel The Giver at the same time in our classes, and we are currently developing interactive activities that our classes can do together on the blog. I have a strong feeling that this is going to be an amazing journey for myself and for my students. I know that there will be obstacles to overcome and revisions to be made, but that is part of the beauty of the monitoring and evaluation steps of the GAME plan process.
I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to learn so much during my time in this course. Even more so, I am excited to see the positive impacts this knowledge will have on my students during the upcoming year!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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 Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
By following my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) during the last eight weeks, I learned many things. Not only have I become aware of the technology knowledge, skills, and attitudes I should possess as a twenty-first century teacher, but I have also learned how to successfully chart a course for myself so that I can successfully become more proficient in these areas. As I have stated previously in my blog posts, perhaps the most powerful concept I will be taking away from the GAME plan process is that integrating technology in my classroom to the maximum extent possible does not happen overnight. I have learned that I am a person who gets incredibly enthused about the new things I learn, but then when trying to implement them all at once, I become overwhelmed and go back to my traditional methods. The GAME plan process has taught me to start small with one or two goals at a time and follow them through completely. My students will benefit from the successful implementation of technology through my achievement with those goals, and then with time more goals can established. Therefore, as the new school year approaches my mindset regarding technology use in my instructional practice will be to remember that quality is more important than quantity. By setting one or two goals for myself, even if I implement them during each nine week period, I can achieve up to eight new goals by the end of the school year. I cannot help but be excited by those possibilities!
Focusing on the immediate future in my classroom, the work I have put in to my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) will definitely pay off once the school year begins. I have already been using some of my down time this summer to work on taking the assessments I already have and devising ways that I can integrate technology into them for the benefit of my students. Furthermore, I am moving along in the process with a fellow reading/language arts teacher to develop our collaborative blog. We will be studying the novel The Giver at the same time in our classes, and we are currently developing interactive activities that our classes can do together on the blog. I have a strong feeling that this is going to be an amazing journey for myself and for my students. I know that there will be obstacles to overcome and revisions to be made, but that is part of the beauty of the monitoring and evaluation steps of the GAME plan process.
I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to learn so much during my time in this course. Even more so, I am excited to see the positive impacts this knowledge will have on my students during the upcoming year!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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 Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Using the GAME Plan Process with Students
During the past six weeks in my current course at Walden University, I have used the GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) process to examine how I could work toward more effectively integrating technology in my classroom. To start this process, I set goals by looking at the website for the International Society for Technology in Education to analyze the NETS-T, which include facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity, designing and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments, modeling digital-age work and learning, promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility, and engaging in professional growth and leadership (National Education Standards for Teachers, 2008). Throughout the last six weeks, I have established my GAME plan by selecting two of these standards to work toward as my goals, developing an action plan for achieving those goals, and monitoring and evaluating my progress.
Just as there are standards for teachers, there are also technology standards for students that can be applied in my reading/language arts classroom. These NETS-S (Cennamo et al., 2009) include creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts.
Obviously the standards for teachers and the standards for students are different, but that does not mean that they are exclusive of one another; rather, they are quite inter-related and that is how they should be approached in the classroom. I strongly believe I could apply the GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) process toward helping my students develop their own technology proficiency skills. One thing I would like to start off doing is to examine the NETS-S with my students. I think it would be wonderful to take these standards and re-word them so that they are student-friendly and more approachable for my eighth graders. I would like to post these standards in my classroom so that we can reference them often in class. Next, just as we have worked gradually through the GAME plan process, I would like to work with my students to identify one or two specific standards toward which they would like to work. I would help them establish their GAME plans as a class, and we could consistently monitor and evaluate their progress toward the goals. As the students become more comfortable with the standards and how to utilize the GAME plan process, I would encourage them to begin branching out and identifying NETS-S that they are interested in pursuing on their own to enhance their technology proficiency skills. By starting with just one or two goals and working toward them as a class, I could model how to approach the GAME plan process so that the students would likely be successful when making their own GAME plans. Just as I have learned with my own GAME plan, it is critical to take just one or two goals at a time and follow them through to the end before attempting to move forward. Slowly but surely, the standards will be addressed and met, thus ensuring quality of learning rather than mere quantity. As I strive to help my students take action on their GAME plans and as I incorporate digital and assistive technologies into my instruction and assessments, not only will my students become more technology literate, but I will be meeting the NETS-T as well. As I mentioned earlier, striving toward one most often leads to accomplishing the other at the same time.
I am pleased that the timing of my courses at Walden allowed for me to take this class now. Although I have not been able to apply my learning with my students yet because of our summer vacation, I believe that by establishing this GAME plan now, I will be on the right track toward having a classroom that embraces technology as a tool that enriches content area learning by the time my students come back in August!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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 Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Just as there are standards for teachers, there are also technology standards for students that can be applied in my reading/language arts classroom. These NETS-S (Cennamo et al., 2009) include creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts.
Obviously the standards for teachers and the standards for students are different, but that does not mean that they are exclusive of one another; rather, they are quite inter-related and that is how they should be approached in the classroom. I strongly believe I could apply the GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009) process toward helping my students develop their own technology proficiency skills. One thing I would like to start off doing is to examine the NETS-S with my students. I think it would be wonderful to take these standards and re-word them so that they are student-friendly and more approachable for my eighth graders. I would like to post these standards in my classroom so that we can reference them often in class. Next, just as we have worked gradually through the GAME plan process, I would like to work with my students to identify one or two specific standards toward which they would like to work. I would help them establish their GAME plans as a class, and we could consistently monitor and evaluate their progress toward the goals. As the students become more comfortable with the standards and how to utilize the GAME plan process, I would encourage them to begin branching out and identifying NETS-S that they are interested in pursuing on their own to enhance their technology proficiency skills. By starting with just one or two goals and working toward them as a class, I could model how to approach the GAME plan process so that the students would likely be successful when making their own GAME plans. Just as I have learned with my own GAME plan, it is critical to take just one or two goals at a time and follow them through to the end before attempting to move forward. Slowly but surely, the standards will be addressed and met, thus ensuring quality of learning rather than mere quantity. As I strive to help my students take action on their GAME plans and as I incorporate digital and assistive technologies into my instruction and assessments, not only will my students become more technology literate, but I will be meeting the NETS-T as well. As I mentioned earlier, striving toward one most often leads to accomplishing the other at the same time.
I am pleased that the timing of my courses at Walden allowed for me to take this class now. Although I have not been able to apply my learning with my students yet because of our summer vacation, I believe that by establishing this GAME plan now, I will be on the right track toward having a classroom that embraces technology as a tool that enriches content area learning by the time my students come back in August!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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 Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
As I continue to dig into my GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) and as I work my way through my current course at Walden, I am constantly learning new information to help me work toward my goals. Like I have stated previously, one of my main goals is to implement collaborative blogging between my students and a class from another state or country to help my students enhance their cultural and global awareness. Well, this week I learned about a variety of tools that could help me do just that and more. In my current class, we are focusing on social networking and online collaboration this week. This coincides to my goals perfectly! This week I have discovered so many other ways my students could collaborate with other students outside of our area that I had never before considered. These include Wiggio, micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, Ning, and ePals (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). In reviewing the NETS-T (National Education Standards for Teachers, 2008), I see that there are numerous other learning goals I would eventually like to set for myself so that I can become a better instructor and so that I can better prepare my students for the twenty-first century workplace. However, in light of the new information I seem to be constantly learning in this class, I do not think it is fair to either myself or my students to start working on new goals at this time. Rather, I want to explore these new tools, which I have not had a chance to do yet, so that I can extend the knowledge I have already gained as I have worked my way through my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009). By thoroughly focusing on just a few of these tools and considering how I can successfully implement them in my classroom, I believe I will do better justice to my students rather than I would if I went ahead and skipped ahead to make new goals when I haven’t truly learned all I want to know so that I can reach my original goals with my students.
That is one of the most pivotal things I have learned throughout this process--not to overwhelm myself or my students by trying too much too soon. I am guilty sometimes of being overly ambitious; I see new and exciting technologies and want to figure out ways I can integrate them all at once into my classroom. When that becomes too challenging though, I seem to burn out and go back to my traditional ways of instruction. That is something I want to keep in mind as I strive to improve my learning. You do not finish a race in one leap; instead, you just keep putting one foot forward. Rather than focusing on quantity, I want to strive instead to focus on quality. I want to remember that it is okay to start with just two goals and to stick with those for a while. Once those have been achieved and are moving along, at that point it is important to consider moving forward with new goals. However, not everything happens overnight, and it is important for me to remember that as I continue my learning.
As I work this week to revise my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009), I have learned that my GAME plan is a good one and that I want to continue focusing on the goals I have set for myself before I try to “burden“ myself with more goals simply for the sake of saying I have them. By continuing to seek information and to test out new tools related to my current goals, I can confidently and successfully implement these technologies in my classroom for my students’ benefit before moving on to new and exciting goals in the future!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Spotlight on Technology: Social Networking and Online Collaboration, Part 1. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
That is one of the most pivotal things I have learned throughout this process--not to overwhelm myself or my students by trying too much too soon. I am guilty sometimes of being overly ambitious; I see new and exciting technologies and want to figure out ways I can integrate them all at once into my classroom. When that becomes too challenging though, I seem to burn out and go back to my traditional ways of instruction. That is something I want to keep in mind as I strive to improve my learning. You do not finish a race in one leap; instead, you just keep putting one foot forward. Rather than focusing on quantity, I want to strive instead to focus on quality. I want to remember that it is okay to start with just two goals and to stick with those for a while. Once those have been achieved and are moving along, at that point it is important to consider moving forward with new goals. However, not everything happens overnight, and it is important for me to remember that as I continue my learning.
As I work this week to revise my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009), I have learned that my GAME plan is a good one and that I want to continue focusing on the goals I have set for myself before I try to “burden“ myself with more goals simply for the sake of saying I have them. By continuing to seek information and to test out new tools related to my current goals, I can confidently and successfully implement these technologies in my classroom for my students’ benefit before moving on to new and exciting goals in the future!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
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.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Spotlight on Technology: Social Networking and Online Collaboration, Part 1. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
And the GAME Continues...
Although my school year is over, my GAME plan (Cennmao, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) definitely is not. I may not be able to truly evaluate how effective my plan has been in helping me to achieve my goals since I no longer have my students and will not implement the true efforts of my GAME plan until school starts again in August, but I can still evaluate how I have progressed so far.
During this week alone, I have been able to take steps toward reaching both my goal of establishing a collaborative blog with another classroom to help my students develop cultural awareness and my goal of integrating technology into my assessments. One of my major concerns last week was simply finding a teacher who taught the same grade/subject matter as me and who had a similar interest in establishing a collaborative blogging effort between our classrooms. Based on the feedback from my peers in my blog last week, I have determined that since this is my first attempt at such a collaboration, it will probably be in my best interest to connect with one teacher and establish a year-long blogging relationship between our classes. Therefore, this week I made it my mission to work on finding such a teacher with whom I could connect.
When conducting my research, I came upon a website that listed several examples of classroom blogs from around the country and even the world. Many of these blogs were already well-established and gave me a lot of good ideas. As I perused these sites, I came across one that stood out to me. It is a middle school reading/language arts blog--which is right up my alley! I decided to e-mail the teacher to see how using a blog in her classroom has benefited her students and to see if she knew anything about online collaboration between classrooms so that I could use her expert advice in achieving this goal. To make a long story short, although she has never engaged in a collaborative blogging effort with another class, she is excited about having the opportunity to do so and offered to take on the effort with me. What is even more amazing is that we both do units on the same novel, although I typically teach my unit during the second half of the year and she teaches hers during the first part. However, the novel (The Giver) fits in nicely at any point in my curriculum and one of my colleague’s and I had discussed moving the unit to the beginning of the year, so it actually works out quite well. At this point, she and I are both e-mailing one another back and forth to determine how we want to approach working through the novel study together. She is also providing me with advice about how she has utilized blogging in her classroom, so it is nice to gain insights from someone who has experience with using this technology.
As for my second goal, my progress has been a little less obvious, but still worthy of mentioning. For my goal of integrating technology into my assessments, I think it is important to remember that I do not have to re-create the wheel. Instead, I can take my current units and revise them so that my assessments are technology-friendly. Therefore, I went and spent half a day in my classroom yesterday at school to work on organizing myself for taking action on this goal over the summer. I studied my curriculum guide and picked out two beginning of the year units that I would like to work on revising during the summer. I gathered those unit notebooks and other resources that I believe will be helpful as I work on revising the assessments and brought them home with me. I believe that by setting my goal to work on these two units this summer, I will go into the new school year having a good head start and then can gradually work on revising my other units as the year moves forward. It feels good to know that I have decided on which units I want to work on and that I have the materials with which to work during the next couple of months.
Each week of this course, I continue to learn new, refreshing ideas about how technology can be used to enhance my instructional methods. As I continue to work on my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009), I look forward to implementing more of these approaches for the benefits of my students. At this time, I do not have any major questions and do not feel the need to make any major changes in my goals or my action plan. My main concern is just remembering that even though it is summer and I do not have my students, that does not mean my plan of action has to stall out. By gradually working on my goals now, I will be able to walk into the new year with a head start.
Although I feel like things are moving along nicely at this point, I still welcome any feedback/advice from all of you. Thanks!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
Reference:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
During this week alone, I have been able to take steps toward reaching both my goal of establishing a collaborative blog with another classroom to help my students develop cultural awareness and my goal of integrating technology into my assessments. One of my major concerns last week was simply finding a teacher who taught the same grade/subject matter as me and who had a similar interest in establishing a collaborative blogging effort between our classrooms. Based on the feedback from my peers in my blog last week, I have determined that since this is my first attempt at such a collaboration, it will probably be in my best interest to connect with one teacher and establish a year-long blogging relationship between our classes. Therefore, this week I made it my mission to work on finding such a teacher with whom I could connect.
When conducting my research, I came upon a website that listed several examples of classroom blogs from around the country and even the world. Many of these blogs were already well-established and gave me a lot of good ideas. As I perused these sites, I came across one that stood out to me. It is a middle school reading/language arts blog--which is right up my alley! I decided to e-mail the teacher to see how using a blog in her classroom has benefited her students and to see if she knew anything about online collaboration between classrooms so that I could use her expert advice in achieving this goal. To make a long story short, although she has never engaged in a collaborative blogging effort with another class, she is excited about having the opportunity to do so and offered to take on the effort with me. What is even more amazing is that we both do units on the same novel, although I typically teach my unit during the second half of the year and she teaches hers during the first part. However, the novel (The Giver) fits in nicely at any point in my curriculum and one of my colleague’s and I had discussed moving the unit to the beginning of the year, so it actually works out quite well. At this point, she and I are both e-mailing one another back and forth to determine how we want to approach working through the novel study together. She is also providing me with advice about how she has utilized blogging in her classroom, so it is nice to gain insights from someone who has experience with using this technology.
As for my second goal, my progress has been a little less obvious, but still worthy of mentioning. For my goal of integrating technology into my assessments, I think it is important to remember that I do not have to re-create the wheel. Instead, I can take my current units and revise them so that my assessments are technology-friendly. Therefore, I went and spent half a day in my classroom yesterday at school to work on organizing myself for taking action on this goal over the summer. I studied my curriculum guide and picked out two beginning of the year units that I would like to work on revising during the summer. I gathered those unit notebooks and other resources that I believe will be helpful as I work on revising the assessments and brought them home with me. I believe that by setting my goal to work on these two units this summer, I will go into the new school year having a good head start and then can gradually work on revising my other units as the year moves forward. It feels good to know that I have decided on which units I want to work on and that I have the materials with which to work during the next couple of months.
Each week of this course, I continue to learn new, refreshing ideas about how technology can be used to enhance my instructional methods. As I continue to work on my GAME plan (Cennamo et al., 2009), I look forward to implementing more of these approaches for the benefits of my students. At this time, I do not have any major questions and do not feel the need to make any major changes in my goals or my action plan. My main concern is just remembering that even though it is summer and I do not have my students, that does not mean my plan of action has to stall out. By gradually working on my goals now, I will be able to walk into the new year with a head start.
Although I feel like things are moving along nicely at this point, I still welcome any feedback/advice from all of you. Thanks!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
Reference:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress...
As I monitor my GAME plan progress (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009), let’s first re-visit my goals. Not only do I want to integrate more technology into my assessments, but I also want to utilize blogging with students from other classrooms and other cultures to enable my students to build their global awareness. So, how is my GAME plan moving along?
As far as finding the information and resources I need, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the topic of this week’s instructional focus in our class at Walden University to be assessing content learning. In addition to gaining information about the steps teachers should take in determining effective assessments, I also learned about technologies that can help me collect and analyze data quickly, such as handheld devices and software for graphing (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). Furthermore, I learned about four different types of assessment formats that included forced-option, open-ended, performance-based, and project-based, as well as various ways I can implement technology for each type of assessment (Cennamo et al., 2009). Therefore, I can honestly say that the learning resources presented this week in my current class definitely provided me with some valuable information to use as I move forward with my goal to integrate technology into my assessments.
I currently do not feel the need to modify my action plan; I simply need to make sure that I follow through with it, especially now that my school has let out for the summer and I can gradually work on building technology-enhanced assessments and networking with other teachers with whom I can establish collaborative blogging projects.
I have already been perusing online for websites geared toward teachers that might allow me to browse classroom profiles, such as grade level and subject area, so that I can begin communicating with my fellow teachers in preparing for collaborative blogging projects once the school year starts. What I have learned is that I need to allow myself more time for this than I thought would be necessary. I haven’t exactly found the information I am looking for just yet.
So, to my fellow classmates, I would like to ask for your advice on the following questions:
Have you found any websites that would be helpful for me that are geared toward allowing teachers to network with one another in attempt to build collaborative relationships between their classrooms? If so, could you share those websites with me or offer any advice about how I might narrow down my search? Also, would you suggest establishing just one ongoing blog project throughout the year with the same collaborating classroom, or would you recommend trying to set up a few shorter projects? If I established just one, my students would build deeper academic relationships with their peer bloggers over time, and this would also seem more feasible. However, if I set up a few shorter blogging projects with various classrooms, my students would have more opportunities to build their cultural awareness. What are your thoughts on this? I would appreciate any feedback you could give me. Thanks!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program seven. Assessing student learning with technology. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author
As far as finding the information and resources I need, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the topic of this week’s instructional focus in our class at Walden University to be assessing content learning. In addition to gaining information about the steps teachers should take in determining effective assessments, I also learned about technologies that can help me collect and analyze data quickly, such as handheld devices and software for graphing (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). Furthermore, I learned about four different types of assessment formats that included forced-option, open-ended, performance-based, and project-based, as well as various ways I can implement technology for each type of assessment (Cennamo et al., 2009). Therefore, I can honestly say that the learning resources presented this week in my current class definitely provided me with some valuable information to use as I move forward with my goal to integrate technology into my assessments.
I currently do not feel the need to modify my action plan; I simply need to make sure that I follow through with it, especially now that my school has let out for the summer and I can gradually work on building technology-enhanced assessments and networking with other teachers with whom I can establish collaborative blogging projects.
I have already been perusing online for websites geared toward teachers that might allow me to browse classroom profiles, such as grade level and subject area, so that I can begin communicating with my fellow teachers in preparing for collaborative blogging projects once the school year starts. What I have learned is that I need to allow myself more time for this than I thought would be necessary. I haven’t exactly found the information I am looking for just yet.
So, to my fellow classmates, I would like to ask for your advice on the following questions:
Have you found any websites that would be helpful for me that are geared toward allowing teachers to network with one another in attempt to build collaborative relationships between their classrooms? If so, could you share those websites with me or offer any advice about how I might narrow down my search? Also, would you suggest establishing just one ongoing blog project throughout the year with the same collaborating classroom, or would you recommend trying to set up a few shorter projects? If I established just one, my students would build deeper academic relationships with their peer bloggers over time, and this would also seem more feasible. However, if I set up a few shorter blogging projects with various classrooms, my students would have more opportunities to build their cultural awareness. What are your thoughts on this? I would appreciate any feedback you could give me. Thanks!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program seven. Assessing student learning with technology. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Continuing my GAME plan
Last week, I had the opportunity to set my personal GAME plan (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009) describing how I intend to become more proficient at implementing technology into my classroom. Now that I have learned more about technology’s possibilities in terms of flexibility for helping me to enable ALL of my students to reach their learning goals (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009), I am excited to review my GAME plan to examine how I am coming along in carrying it out.
As I described last week, my two main goals currently are to implement technology into my assessments, particularly in my culminating projects, and to utilize collaborative technologies such as blogging to help my students develop cultural awareness.
In analyzing my GAME plan, I know I must consider what resources I might need to carry my goals out. In terms of incorporating technology into my assessments, I will need to examine my content area standards and pacing guide to discover where I can build in culminating projects that utilize technology so that I can enhance my current unit plans. I do not think it is necessary to build my units from scratch, but it will be important for me to revise the units I teach by thinking with the end in mind. If I will be going from standardized test format assessments to culminating projects that involve the use of technology, I need to think with the end in mind as I teach my units. Therefore, it will be critical for me to utilize my standards, pacing guide, and current unit plans as I work to carry out this goal. It will also be beneficial for me to work with my fellow eighth grade reading/language arts teacher so that we can collaboratively build these assessments together so that they are cohesive. In terms of using technology to help my students build cultural awareness, I will need computer access to blogging software or websites. In addition, I will need to visit teacher forums or collaboration websites to find a classroom that is similar to mine in terms of grade level and content area, but that is unique enough from my own that we can work together to build global understandings.
At this time, as far as additional information that I need, I know it is important for me to continue building my background knowledge of the numerous digital technologies that are available so that I can teach my students about them and infuse them into my instruction. I can do this by continuing to read and gain hands-on practice as much as possible, in addition to reaching out to my colleagues for advice.
I am pleased to say that I have already been able to take steps already in terms of my first goal. Now that my school year is winding down (only 2 more days!), I have used this more relaxed pace that we are allowed now that our state testing is complete to start working with my students to consult them about what they know about digital technologies and to ascertain what their interests are in using technology in their learning. They have been invaluable resources for me, showing me what they know about creating movies, animations, and using various online resources to enhance the quality of podcasts. I thought I already had a good base of background knowledge, but my students have truly given me some excellent ideas that I have noted so that I can consider them as I work this summer to integrate technology more extensively into my assessments!
I look forward to continuing my quest to carry out my GAME plan. I welcome any suggestions from you all or advice about resources I might consult. Thanks for your help!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Meeting students’ needs with technology part 1. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author
As I described last week, my two main goals currently are to implement technology into my assessments, particularly in my culminating projects, and to utilize collaborative technologies such as blogging to help my students develop cultural awareness.
In analyzing my GAME plan, I know I must consider what resources I might need to carry my goals out. In terms of incorporating technology into my assessments, I will need to examine my content area standards and pacing guide to discover where I can build in culminating projects that utilize technology so that I can enhance my current unit plans. I do not think it is necessary to build my units from scratch, but it will be important for me to revise the units I teach by thinking with the end in mind. If I will be going from standardized test format assessments to culminating projects that involve the use of technology, I need to think with the end in mind as I teach my units. Therefore, it will be critical for me to utilize my standards, pacing guide, and current unit plans as I work to carry out this goal. It will also be beneficial for me to work with my fellow eighth grade reading/language arts teacher so that we can collaboratively build these assessments together so that they are cohesive. In terms of using technology to help my students build cultural awareness, I will need computer access to blogging software or websites. In addition, I will need to visit teacher forums or collaboration websites to find a classroom that is similar to mine in terms of grade level and content area, but that is unique enough from my own that we can work together to build global understandings.
At this time, as far as additional information that I need, I know it is important for me to continue building my background knowledge of the numerous digital technologies that are available so that I can teach my students about them and infuse them into my instruction. I can do this by continuing to read and gain hands-on practice as much as possible, in addition to reaching out to my colleagues for advice.
I am pleased to say that I have already been able to take steps already in terms of my first goal. Now that my school year is winding down (only 2 more days!), I have used this more relaxed pace that we are allowed now that our state testing is complete to start working with my students to consult them about what they know about digital technologies and to ascertain what their interests are in using technology in their learning. They have been invaluable resources for me, showing me what they know about creating movies, animations, and using various online resources to enhance the quality of podcasts. I thought I already had a good base of background knowledge, but my students have truly given me some excellent ideas that I have noted so that I can consider them as I work this summer to integrate technology more extensively into my assessments!
I look forward to continuing my quest to carry out my GAME plan. I welcome any suggestions from you all or advice about resources I might consult. Thanks for your help!
Amanda Bryant
8th grade reading/language arts
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009).Technology integration for meaningful classroom use. A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Meeting students’ needs with technology part 1. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author
Thursday, May 13, 2010
NETS-T: My Personal GAME Plan
As I continue my Adolescent Literacy and Technology program at Walden University, I continue to learn new ways that I can improve my instruction by integrating technology so that I can enhance my students’ learning experiences. As Ertmer suggested (Laureate Education Inc., 2009), integrating technology effectively requires knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and a supportive culture. I am fortunate enough to already have the latter two; however, I recognize that it is important to constantly build my body of knowledge, as technology is an ever-evolving tool (King-Sears & Evmenova, 2007). Additionally, gaining knowledge about the utilization of instructional technology will gradually help to build my confidence about my ability to implement these tools effectively to help my students gain content area understandings, while also fostering their twenty-first century literacy skills.
One way that I can begin building my knowledge and confidence in reference to integrating technology into my content area instruction is to examine the National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) (National Education Standards for Teachers, 2008). Though there are several of these standards in which I believe I could work to strengthen myself, I know that it is important to gradually begin this process so that I do not get overwhelmed by the process. Therefore, I have identified two areas in which I would like to become more proficient:
Standard 2.d: provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching
Standard 4.d: develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital-age communication and collaboration tools
To assist my efforts with becoming more proficient in these areas, I have developed a personal GAME plan to guide my self-direct learning (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). My GAME plan is as follows:
Goals: In other words, what do I want to know how to do? This one is easy. Pertaining to the standards above, I want to integrate technology into my assessments much more than I am doing now. Unfortunately, my assessments have been so geared lately toward following standardized test formats that I have eliminated almost all technology in my formative and summative assessments in favor of multiple choice question exams. While there is certainly a need for students to practice these types of assessments, they should not be the sole format for my evaluations of student learning. Therefore, I want to strive to implement projects at the end of my learning units that will allow my students to utilize their creative thinking skills by using technology to demonstrate their learning. Additionally, I want to integrate technologies such as blogging to enable my students, many of whom have never even been outside our small, rural town, to collaborate with students from other cultures to develop their global awareness, which I have sadly noticed to be quite lacking in my eighth graders each year.
Actions: What actions will I take to achieve these goals? For standard 2.d, I will examine my content standards and learning units to identify at least two units where I can develop assessments that will allow my students to creatively share their learning through the use of digital technologies. Though I will continue to assess my students’ learning using some standardized forms of assessment, I will also integrate culminating projects where my students can use tools such as digital storytelling, designing WebQuests, and so on to demonstrate their content knowledge while utilizing their twenty-first literacy skills. For standard 4.d, I will consult teacher collaboration sites and forums to reach out to educators from other areas of the country and, hopefully, the world to find someone with whom I can build a collaborative relationship between our classrooms. I would like to engage in a blogging project with this other classroom so that our students to interact with one another, engage in shared learning experiences, and gain cultural awareness from each other.
Monitor: How will I monitor my progress? As my students are engaged in developing their culminating products that integrate digital technologies and as the students engage in their collaborative blogging projects with students from another classroom, I will have to work alongside my students, determining what problems might come up with the use of the various technologies or in posting their blogs or maintaining online etiquette. As any problems come up, I will need to ensure that I am self-directed enough to have worked with the programs so that I can guide my students through the process toward being successful. I will also examine the levels of thinking demonstrated in my students’ technology-infused culminating products and at the content of their blog posts. By monitoring these, I can assess whether technology is merely being used for technology’s sake, or whether my students are actually using it as a tool to enhance content knowledge and their abilities to share it. If the first proves to start happening, I will need to be ready to step in and provide further modeling for my students about how the technologies should better be used.
Evaluate and extend: How will I evaluate and extend my learning? While I will be interacting with and working alongside my students as they work on their assessments and their collaborative blogging partnerships so that I can monitor how things are going, I think it will be critical to get feedback at the end of the learning experiences as well. I will ask my students to share their thoughts about how both projects went and what they think could have been improved, perhaps in their reflective journals. By reading these, I will be able to evaluate what I can do to enhance my proficiency in both standards before implementing the assessments and collaborative blogging projects the next year. Furthermore, I will reflect on my own as well about how I have met my goals and whether I feel ready to move on toward making new goals or whether I need to modify my GAME plan for the current ones so I can make improvements in the future.
I believe that developing this personal GAME plan will enable me to integrate technology more effectively in my content area instruction, and I look forward to doing so!
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.
King-Sears, M., & Evmenova, A. S. (2007, Sep/Oct). Premises, principles, and processes for integrating TECHnology into instruction. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(1), 6–14.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program three. Enriching content area learning experiences with technology. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
One way that I can begin building my knowledge and confidence in reference to integrating technology into my content area instruction is to examine the National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) (National Education Standards for Teachers, 2008). Though there are several of these standards in which I believe I could work to strengthen myself, I know that it is important to gradually begin this process so that I do not get overwhelmed by the process. Therefore, I have identified two areas in which I would like to become more proficient:
Standard 2.d: provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching
Standard 4.d: develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital-age communication and collaboration tools
To assist my efforts with becoming more proficient in these areas, I have developed a personal GAME plan to guide my self-direct learning (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). My GAME plan is as follows:
Goals: In other words, what do I want to know how to do? This one is easy. Pertaining to the standards above, I want to integrate technology into my assessments much more than I am doing now. Unfortunately, my assessments have been so geared lately toward following standardized test formats that I have eliminated almost all technology in my formative and summative assessments in favor of multiple choice question exams. While there is certainly a need for students to practice these types of assessments, they should not be the sole format for my evaluations of student learning. Therefore, I want to strive to implement projects at the end of my learning units that will allow my students to utilize their creative thinking skills by using technology to demonstrate their learning. Additionally, I want to integrate technologies such as blogging to enable my students, many of whom have never even been outside our small, rural town, to collaborate with students from other cultures to develop their global awareness, which I have sadly noticed to be quite lacking in my eighth graders each year.
Actions: What actions will I take to achieve these goals? For standard 2.d, I will examine my content standards and learning units to identify at least two units where I can develop assessments that will allow my students to creatively share their learning through the use of digital technologies. Though I will continue to assess my students’ learning using some standardized forms of assessment, I will also integrate culminating projects where my students can use tools such as digital storytelling, designing WebQuests, and so on to demonstrate their content knowledge while utilizing their twenty-first literacy skills. For standard 4.d, I will consult teacher collaboration sites and forums to reach out to educators from other areas of the country and, hopefully, the world to find someone with whom I can build a collaborative relationship between our classrooms. I would like to engage in a blogging project with this other classroom so that our students to interact with one another, engage in shared learning experiences, and gain cultural awareness from each other.
Monitor: How will I monitor my progress? As my students are engaged in developing their culminating products that integrate digital technologies and as the students engage in their collaborative blogging projects with students from another classroom, I will have to work alongside my students, determining what problems might come up with the use of the various technologies or in posting their blogs or maintaining online etiquette. As any problems come up, I will need to ensure that I am self-directed enough to have worked with the programs so that I can guide my students through the process toward being successful. I will also examine the levels of thinking demonstrated in my students’ technology-infused culminating products and at the content of their blog posts. By monitoring these, I can assess whether technology is merely being used for technology’s sake, or whether my students are actually using it as a tool to enhance content knowledge and their abilities to share it. If the first proves to start happening, I will need to be ready to step in and provide further modeling for my students about how the technologies should better be used.
Evaluate and extend: How will I evaluate and extend my learning? While I will be interacting with and working alongside my students as they work on their assessments and their collaborative blogging partnerships so that I can monitor how things are going, I think it will be critical to get feedback at the end of the learning experiences as well. I will ask my students to share their thoughts about how both projects went and what they think could have been improved, perhaps in their reflective journals. By reading these, I will be able to evaluate what I can do to enhance my proficiency in both standards before implementing the assessments and collaborative blogging projects the next year. Furthermore, I will reflect on my own as well about how I have met my goals and whether I feel ready to move on toward making new goals or whether I need to modify my GAME plan for the current ones so I can make improvements in the future.
I believe that developing this personal GAME plan will enable me to integrate technology more effectively in my content area instruction, and I look forward to doing so!
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.
King-Sears, M., & Evmenova, A. S. (2007, Sep/Oct). Premises, principles, and processes for integrating TECHnology into instruction. Teaching Exceptional Children, 40(1), 6–14.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program three. Enriching content area learning experiences with technology. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Insights about Inquiry
Kuhlthau (2007) stated, “The challenge for the 21st-century school is to educate children for living and working in an information-rich technological environment” (p. 2). As my current course, EDUC 6712: Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom, at Walden University draws to a close, I realize now more than ever that in addition to teaching my students to understand our 8th grade English/Language Arts standards, I must also incorporate the instruction of new literacy skills as a critical component in my unit planning. Based on my learning experiences in this course, I have had some striking revelations about teaching new literacy skills and how I can, as a result, modify my current instructional practices so that I might better prepare my students for living and working as productive members of the 21st century society, as Kuhlthau suggested. Furthermore, I have started to contemplate ways in which I can enhance my own professional development so that I can attain more knowledge about literacy and technology, thus making me a more effective educator for my students.
Perhaps the most important revelation I had about teaching new literacy skills as a result of this class was that I simply learned what the most critical objectives were that my students needed to grasp in order to become more technologically fluent by 21st century standards. According to the video “New Literacies” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009), the five major new literacy skills include questioning, searching, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating. Before this course, I recognized the importance of helping my students become prepared for their futures as members of a technologically-rich world; however, this task seemed so overwhelming that I scarcely knew where to begin. As we began to develop our own inquiry units, though, I started to realize that it was indeed possible to help my students learn their content standards and, by providing explicit instruction in reference to the five aforementioned new literacy skills, become more prepared for the 21st century workplace. In other words, thanks to this course, I realized not only that it is POSSIBLE to seamlessly integrate new literacy skills into units that focus on content instruction, but I also learned HOW to achieve this goal as I worked on building my inquiry unit centered on the power of persuasion as the course progressed from week to week.
Based upon this revelation of learning how I can teach content and new literacy skills by building engaging, thought-provoking inquiry units, my future teaching practices will certainly be influenced. While I had heard of inquiry units before this class, I had never worked to build one myself; they seemed too intimidating and time-consuming. However, I now realize that those were simply my own ignorant misconceptions. Inquiry units can inspire and motivate my students to engage in deep pursuit of content understandings, all the while enhancing their new literacy skills. What could be more worthy of my instructional time? Therefore, my future teaching practices will reflect these new understandings in the sense that my unit planning will become much more inquiry-based. I will use teacher think-alouds and explicit modeling to scaffold the inquiry process for my students, gradually shifting responsibility to them through guided practice and eventual independent work (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007). Throughout the journey in these units, I will both formally and informally assess my students’ content and new literacy understandings using strategies such as reflective journaling, conferencing, multimedia projects, and rubrics (2007). Overall, based on my experiences in this course, I will look forward to engaging my students in investigative inquiry units that will inspire their passion for learning while also affording them the opportunities to practice critical new literacy skills. I am also more understanding of the fact that students are not as technologically aware as we sometimes believe. Just because our students know how to navigate social networking sites such as Facebook and enjoy activities such as online gaming, it does not mean that they have the skills required to engage in 21st century fluencies such as effectively locating and critically evaluating information. Thus, by incorporating inquiry units in my teaching practices, I can ensure that my students make progress in learning these competencies.
Now that I am completing this course, I have established a goal that I think would benefit me as I strive to enhance my understandings of technology’s use in the classroom, while also truly motivating my students. During Week Six of this course, we had the opportunity to discuss building collaborative partnerships with educators in other classrooms around the country and even the world. I mentioned my desire to build a collaborative wiki with a fellow educator for our students to engage in discussion and learning activities centered on The Giver by Lois Lowry. A fellow student in the course mentioned that she also teaches the same novel and would be interested in initiating a partnership to develop a wiki where our students could engage in an investigative study of the novel together. Therefore, I will take steps to continue this discussion with my colleague to set up such a wiki so that our students can enhance their reading comprehension skills, while also building learning connections with students from other classrooms to broaden their perspectives. As we initially develop this collaboration project, I have confidence that, due to its positive impact on our technology skills, new ideas will spark in time, including utilizing podcasts and blogging to further enhance the learning experience for our students.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to investigate inquiry learning during the previous eight weeks of this course, for I know that the learning experiences in which I have engaged will have far-reaching consequences for my students in the months they have left in my classroom, while also preparing them for their futures in the 21st century workplace.
References:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2007). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). New literacies. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: Author.
Perhaps the most important revelation I had about teaching new literacy skills as a result of this class was that I simply learned what the most critical objectives were that my students needed to grasp in order to become more technologically fluent by 21st century standards. According to the video “New Literacies” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009), the five major new literacy skills include questioning, searching, evaluating, synthesizing, and communicating. Before this course, I recognized the importance of helping my students become prepared for their futures as members of a technologically-rich world; however, this task seemed so overwhelming that I scarcely knew where to begin. As we began to develop our own inquiry units, though, I started to realize that it was indeed possible to help my students learn their content standards and, by providing explicit instruction in reference to the five aforementioned new literacy skills, become more prepared for the 21st century workplace. In other words, thanks to this course, I realized not only that it is POSSIBLE to seamlessly integrate new literacy skills into units that focus on content instruction, but I also learned HOW to achieve this goal as I worked on building my inquiry unit centered on the power of persuasion as the course progressed from week to week.
Based upon this revelation of learning how I can teach content and new literacy skills by building engaging, thought-provoking inquiry units, my future teaching practices will certainly be influenced. While I had heard of inquiry units before this class, I had never worked to build one myself; they seemed too intimidating and time-consuming. However, I now realize that those were simply my own ignorant misconceptions. Inquiry units can inspire and motivate my students to engage in deep pursuit of content understandings, all the while enhancing their new literacy skills. What could be more worthy of my instructional time? Therefore, my future teaching practices will reflect these new understandings in the sense that my unit planning will become much more inquiry-based. I will use teacher think-alouds and explicit modeling to scaffold the inquiry process for my students, gradually shifting responsibility to them through guided practice and eventual independent work (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007). Throughout the journey in these units, I will both formally and informally assess my students’ content and new literacy understandings using strategies such as reflective journaling, conferencing, multimedia projects, and rubrics (2007). Overall, based on my experiences in this course, I will look forward to engaging my students in investigative inquiry units that will inspire their passion for learning while also affording them the opportunities to practice critical new literacy skills. I am also more understanding of the fact that students are not as technologically aware as we sometimes believe. Just because our students know how to navigate social networking sites such as Facebook and enjoy activities such as online gaming, it does not mean that they have the skills required to engage in 21st century fluencies such as effectively locating and critically evaluating information. Thus, by incorporating inquiry units in my teaching practices, I can ensure that my students make progress in learning these competencies.
Now that I am completing this course, I have established a goal that I think would benefit me as I strive to enhance my understandings of technology’s use in the classroom, while also truly motivating my students. During Week Six of this course, we had the opportunity to discuss building collaborative partnerships with educators in other classrooms around the country and even the world. I mentioned my desire to build a collaborative wiki with a fellow educator for our students to engage in discussion and learning activities centered on The Giver by Lois Lowry. A fellow student in the course mentioned that she also teaches the same novel and would be interested in initiating a partnership to develop a wiki where our students could engage in an investigative study of the novel together. Therefore, I will take steps to continue this discussion with my colleague to set up such a wiki so that our students can enhance their reading comprehension skills, while also building learning connections with students from other classrooms to broaden their perspectives. As we initially develop this collaboration project, I have confidence that, due to its positive impact on our technology skills, new ideas will spark in time, including utilizing podcasts and blogging to further enhance the learning experience for our students.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to investigate inquiry learning during the previous eight weeks of this course, for I know that the learning experiences in which I have engaged will have far-reaching consequences for my students in the months they have left in my classroom, while also preparing them for their futures in the 21st century workplace.
References:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.
Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2007). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). New literacies. Supporting information literacy and online inquiry in the classroom. Baltimore: Author.
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