As
I take time to look back over the last few years of teaching, I notice that there
are many areas in which I can improve in hopes of one day becoming a
distinguished teacher. I am currently in my fourth year of teaching and
thoroughly enjoy what I do. With technology changing every day, pressures of
state testing, and everything else, I sometimes tend to forget to take a step
back and think about what I can do to change my styles of teaching in an effort
to be more effective and help my students be more successful. The International
Society for Technology in Education and National Education Standards offers
great information about the standards that we as teachers should meet. When I
look at these standards I notice that I am proficient in some whereas in
others, I can definitely improve. The two that I think are my weakest include
design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools
and resources to promote student learning and creativity and design and Develop Digital-Age Learning
Experiences and Assessments.
In
looking at the GAME plan introduced this week, I realize that I could easily
work to become proficient in my weak areas. When it comes to designing and
adapting relevant learning experiences that incorporates digital tools and
resources to promote student learning and creativity, I think of projects that
my students do every year. Most of the time students would complete projects
using PowerPoint. However, in an effort to work on this standard, my goal is to
introduce students to more digital tools that can be used to create projects.
My action plan would be to incorporate more lesson plans that uses and teaches
students various digital tools such as Voice Thread, wikis, blogs, and
podcasts. If I can create lesson plans to incorporate these tools than my
students will have some exposure to them and begin getting ideas on how they
can use them in projects. I can monitor the projects by seeing how much more
students are engaged when using technology as opposed to paper and pencil or
the usual power point presentation. I can also look at the end result compared
to what they have done in the past and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of
digital tools.
To
design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, this
standard somewhat ties into the one mentioned above. My plan is to assign more hands
on projects that would allow my students to be more creative and show what they
have learned more as opposed to taking a pencil and paper assessment to show
what they know. It would be more beneficial if students could show their
learning by creating a project. In addition, I can use other sources of
technology and keep a blog with my students in which they will post answers to
questions presented. In thinking about my action, I would post questions on a
blog which students will answer. This will be one method of assessment to
ensure that they can explain their thoughts and ideas. I will monitor student
performance as well as their engagement in the activity. Evaluating will take
place when I review and score their work. I can compare their assessment grades
using technology to the standard way of assessing and see which is more
effective.
I
look forward to working to incorporate more 21st century tools into
my classroom. I have already seen that students are more engaged when they are
using technology. If I can teach them incorporating more digital tools and
assess them using technology which they enjoy, than I think I will see better
results.
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.
ISTE.
(2008). NETS for teachers: advancing digital age teaching. Retrieved on May 9,
2012 from: http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS-T_Standards.sflb.ashx
I really love your idea about getting kids involved in creating projects without the use of paper and pencil. I too have thought about starting this for next year and just seeing how my first grade kids do with this. I am still wondering if having them create a power point presentation to start or allowing the kids to create blogs or smart notebook presentations. This is a question that I guess I will just have to answer by allowing the students to try each and see which one they are capable of completing
ReplyDeleteLeonor,
ReplyDeleteI love that we share one of the weaknesses of learning experiences with creativity. I also am one of those educators who only limited my students to what I thought they could do. The levels of creativity for my lessons consisted of the basic writing reports, powerpoints, etc. As a result, I did not know that I was hindering my students for their future in the economic world. As I take different classes in my educational path, I have began incorporting tools that I am introduced to. The problem that I have is that the curriculum does not allow the flexibility. Do you have these same problems? Have you began integrating the tools that you listed above and if so, which one did the students appreciate the most?
Nikisha
Thank you both for taking time to comment on my post. Nikisha, to answer your questions, yes I do have the problem sometimes with the curriculum not being flexible enough to allow me to use the tools I want to use as often as I would like to use them. However, this school year alone, I have used blogs and wikis with my students. My students posted science journals online through blogs and they have also been posting on a class wiki in the last three weeks. I have been amazed by how much harder they work and the effort they put in when technology is involved. I have introduced my students to VoiceThread and I have also used Spiderscribe.net online to do some concept mapping with students. The only podcast I've done with studnets is the interview I did with them from an earlier class through Walden where I interviewed how much technology they have at home and how often they use it. My biggest problem is not the curriculum, I have thought of many ways to find one way or another to integrate various digital tools I've learned throughout my experience with Walden, moreover, the lack of technology in my school is what keeps me from being able to do more. All teachers just got an IPad two weeks ago. I would love to get more technology into my kids hands to enable them to do more. I think of all the ones I mentioned above, seeing the kids do the Wiki and work on it has been the most rewarding because they have really taken ownership of it.
ReplyDeleteLeonor,
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that you want to get your kids using more technology. One type of presentation software I recently learned about is Prezi. All the presentations are stored in the cloud and people can leave comments. Prezi is a lot like PowerPoint, but more interactive. You can zoom in on certain areas and it will "fly" from one part to the next. It allows students to be creative in their presentations. You should check it out!
After reading your post I was also going to recommend using Prezi. I used it for the first time this year and my students really liked it. Another project idea that I used this year with my students was having them create a video in the style of CommonCraft's "In Plain English". It was a good transition type assignment because it was digital but not overwhelming. Many of my students really enjoyed it as well.
ReplyDelete