Reflection

When I think about the process of learning how to produce a GAME plan and how to properly produce success with my goals, I think about how much I learned about being a reflective practitioner. Throughout the whole process I had to constantly think and reflect about where I was going with my goals and how I was going to achieve them. The GAME plan had already built in the factor that I had to monitor what I was doing and then evaluate my process. I think that this is the only reason why my GAME plan was a success, since I was pushed to look at where I was going with them and see if I attained what I was supposed to. “The GAME plan requires you to think about and take steps to direct your learning process, specifically while learning about technology and how to integrate it into the curriculum” (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009, p. 3). Creating small steps to reach my goals was one reason why I think that my GAME plan was successful. I think that I would have been overwhelmed by the process if I wouldn’t have taken small steps. My last reason why I think it was successful, was because I believed in the goals that I set and I thought of them as being important for my classroom. If I would have never thought it was useful, I don’t think I would have put so much thought into how I could incorporate my new learning into my reading intervention classroom. From my learning, I realized how important these Web 2.0 tools are and the different ways to incorporate technology into my classroom to help my diverse students that are reluctant readers.

            I had a lot of new learning through this process of taking action to meet my goals. I learned a lot from my previous course about incorporating eBooks into my classroom to help my most struggling readers. I also learned about how to create problem-based learning, which I had no idea how to create one before I took this course. I also saw how social networking and digital storytelling can be an integral part to the problem-based learning; I liked how they went together. My favorite things that I learned were from my classmates in this class. They gave great feedback with my blog posts and on my lessons in our wiki site. From reading about their ideas for their classrooms, I was able to start writing a list of ideas on how to make their ideas work in my classroom.

            I think that all of this new learning has already had a huge impact on my thinking as a teacher and on my instructional practice. Everything I do with my students, I am trying to incorporate some way to incorporate more technology. I am getting ready to implement my new GAME plan that I created in my professional development at the school that I teach. I am going to create my wiki site for the juniors that I teach, set up the blogging account for them, incorporate digital storytelling into their activities, teach them to use Delicious for bookmarking, and how to cooperatively collaborate using 21^st Century skills. Once, I have done this with my two smaller classes, I hope to incorporate next year into my other classes.

            Overall, it is amazing to think about how much I learned in just 8 weeks from this course. When thinking about my future endeavors with technology, I need to remember what Abrams (2010) stated in one of our videos which was to “use technology to match your goals” (Laureate Education, 2010a). I know that I will be able to successfully create new GAME plans for myself and teach my students how to use them also. In the end, I am on my way of being a reflective, goal-oriented, flexible, knowledgeable teacher getting my students ready for their future 21^st Century jobs.

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). (2010a). Abrams, A. (Speaker). Spotlight on Technology: Digital storytelling, Part 1. [DVD]. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD.

Monitoring Your GAME Plan Progress

I am excited about the progress with my game plan! I have been learning so many new things and I am thrilled that everything will be up and running for the 2012 2013 school year. I think having these from the start is really going to impact my relationships with the students, facility, and families.

Web pages come in all sorts of sizes depending on the way the developers and designers coded them. Your monitor's screen resolution may also affect the overall look of the Web page. Large Web pages may not properly fit in small screens such as the ones that netbooks use. Make these Web pages smaller by adjusting the window size and zoom level. A sticky post is a type of blog post that is published near the top of a blog, usually to keep hot or static content in a prominent place for the reader to see when she lands on the homepage. WordPress is a popular blogging service that frequently makes use of the sticky post feature. Follow these steps to make your favorite posts visible on the front page of your blog.

If you have a web site that is in the process of covering a current event or has pertinent information that is changing rapidly, you may want to set up the page to refresh itself automatically. This will help ensure that the information presented to your users is always up to date. Fortunately, through the use of a legacy meta tag, accomplishing this task is a simple matter of a single line of code In WordPress, the formatting and positioning of posts is kept static -- the content is loaded from an MySQL database. This normally means that all posts look the same. However, custom post templates can be uploaded to your WordPress theme that allow different backgrounds to be assigned to different posts. This is useful if your site covers several topics and you want each section to have a unique look. To accomplish this customization, you must have an FTP login, and your WordPress user role must either be Super Admin or Administrator.

There are a number of ways to create a link to your website, depending on the Web programming language you choose. The simplest method uses HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the most commonly used language to build websites and format Internet text. To create a basic inline link, or a link that shows as highlighted, clickable text, HTML uses tags, enclosed in straight brackets, and the command "HREF" to define the highlighted text and the location (the URL) that the link should go to. If you design your own web pages, icons can help draw viewers to your pages. Making an icon involves taking an image and making it the centerpiece of the icon with the right development software. Once you have the icon, your internet file server can translate the icon into the needed HTML code for web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer. The procedure varies depending on the exact type of software you use.

Carrying Out Your GAME Plan

The Steps Involved In Creating A Classroom Website

There are several tasks you need to complete before you even begin designing your classroom website. You have to be sure that you know what they are, and have the tools necessary to perform them. Listed below are the different steps in the process that you need to address. The first thing you need to do is find out what your district's policy on web page creation is. There may be a web server controlled by your district where you can "host" your classroom website. If they do, they will probably have rules and regulations governing the publication of content that you will need to adhere to. The pages you create may need to be reviewed by a committee, or you may even have the freedom to publish your pages without having to consult with anyone. It all depends on district policy, and you need to know what that is It's important to know the limits of what you can and cannot do, especially when publishing students' work. "Hosting" simply refers to the web server on which you will publish your website. It's where the web pages live. Hosting usually costs money, though there are plenty of hosts offering free web space. They often display adverts on your pages so that they can make at least some money back. Some free hosts perform quite slowly so that you'll be waiting for a while before web pages load completely in your browser. It's up to you whether you want to put up with the limitations imposed by such free web hosts. If you have a budget to spend, you'll find that you can get a good host for around $5/month. Alternatively, if your school district runs its own web server, you may not have to pay anything - or put up with annoying adverts. Check with your district first.

If you have internet access at home, your account usually comes with some free web space, so you may be able to use that to house your classroom website. Most hosts, be they free or paid for, provide tools to help you create web pages. This is especially useful if you are a novice and don't know HTML.

Universal Design for Learning

In my lesson students demonstrate a sound understanding of the nature and operation of technology systems. Practice using sight words.

Materials:

• Word Processor such as Microsoft Word, or WordPad.
• Projector
• Electronic Whiteboard 
• First Grade Typing Sight Words PDF

Motivation:

• Display the First Grade Typing Sight Words PDF on a projector on the front of the room.

Activity:

• After you have introduced the keyboard to your first graders, now is the time to practice typing!
• Demonstrate to the class how to open the word processor of your choice. Teach them how to use the SPACEBAR and the ENTER key to make spaces and line breaks.
• Have your students type their first names and hit the enter key twice to start on a new line.
• The First Grade Typing Sight Words PDF has a list of 10 words. Show each one on the electronic whiteboard until every student typed it on to their computer. If they finish quickly, have them hit the space bar and type it again.
• Press enter between different words.

Example: Your students work may look like this: Joe after after aft where may may may m open op every just jus going from f thank

round roun

 

The built-in accessibility features are extensions to the operating system. These features affect the behavior of the system regardless of which applications are running. If I was going to incorporate some of the built-in accessibility features I would use mousekeys that enables the user to control the mouse pointer using the numeric keypad. The MOUSEKEYS structure defines the parameters for this feature. I may enable the user to provide input using an alternate input device attached to the computer's serial port. This feature is designed for users who are unable to use the computer's standard keyboard and mouse. The SERIALKEYS structure defines the parameters for this feature. Displays a visual signal when a sound is generated by a Microsoft Win32-based application or an Microsoft MS-DOS application running in a window. The SOUNDSENTRY structure defines the parameters for this feature, including the address of the SoundSentryProc callback function. We could allow the user to type key combinations, such as CTRL+ALT+DEL, in sequence rather than at the same time. The STICKYKEYS structure defines the parameters for this feature. Another option would be to provide sound feedback when the user turns on or off the CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK, or SCROLL LOCK keys. The TOGGLEKEYS structure defines the parameters for this feature. It is really nice to be aware of all the ways technology can adapt and change for our diverse student population!

My Reflection

Over the past couple of months, I have looked at several different theories of learning and instructional strategies as a part of my EDUC 6711 course at Walden University. In this weeks blog, I will reflect on what I have learned in this course and how my approach to the classroom has changed or stayed the same as a result.

In my first week of the course, I had to come up with a “personal theory of learning.” I stated that I like to try and have the learner be as active in the learning process as possible and that I believed strongly in cooperative learning. I felt like my personal theory fell mostly into the social learning theories, although I thought that other theories were present as well. I also stated that I liked to vary the strategies that I use so that the classroom stays fresh and does not get dull.

I feel that for the most part, my theory of learning has stayed the same. Still, the more I learned about all of the theories of learning that we looked at, the more I realized that that many of them are more present in my classroom than I thought. This course made me understand that I can be incorporating several theories at once in my classroom and that we can rarely be defined by just one at any time. It also showed me that technology advancements have made incorporating more theories into instruction more possible than ever before.

As a result of learning in this course, I will make a couple of immediate adjustments to my instructional practice regarding technology integration. First, I will make sure that I am using technology more as a learning tool instead of an instructional tool. For technology to be used as a learning tool, the students must be using it and be active with it and if they are not then it is just an instructional tool. I want to make sure that anything we are using has the students fully involved. I also want to move to using a majority of my graphic organizers on the computer. I feel this makes the use of organizers much more easy and capable of doing more.

Two technology tools that I would like to use more with my students from this course are concept mapping and VoiceThread. I want to use concept mapping more because it opens up webbing as a graphic organizer to new possibilities. The students can go to an online site and collaborate with each other no matter where they are. They can also use many things within these programs to make graphic organizers that could never be made on a sheet of paper. With VoiceThread, the students have an opportunity to come up with a presentation or a problem and post it to the web. They can comment on what each other are doing and then use it to strengthen the work they are doing in the classroom. It is a great tool that has a lot of potential that I have just began to scratch the surface of.

This course has expanded my repertoire of instructional skills greatly. I now have a better understanding of the different theories of learning and how they affect the student and how to best put them into practice. I now also understand more the different instructional strategies that can be used in the classroom, how technology can enhance them, and how they relate to learning theory. I feel more confident than ever as a teacher now because of this course because I feel better armed to provide my students with the best learning experience I can.

With this course, I have two long-term goal changes I would like to make with my instructional practice regarding technology integration. The first is something I mentioned earlier, which is to make sure that technology and instruction is being used primarily as a learning tool. To do this, I am going to make sure that anytime I am planning out a lesson that I am making sure that the student is going to be active in whatever we are doing. I have added a section to my personal daily notes for listing what I did that was active and not active for the learner. Using this to reflect on will help to make sure that I do not make the same mistakes again and that I do things that will be more active and learning focused for the student.

The other goal that I have is to use technology to collaborate with other teacher’s classes. I plan on doing this by communicating with my colleagues more to design activities that the students can do to allow them to work with other classes in the same and different subjects. I believe the key to this is the collaboration between me and other teachers and if I can get this down then the students will fall into it naturally. I believe that the students would enjoy this a lot and they would learn more from it by stretching what we are learning across to other classrooms.

This course has been benefited me more than I could ever realize. My understanding of my students and how they learn is on a much higher level than ever before. Not only do I understand my students more now, but I also understand how technology has its place in it all more than before. I now feel more confident moving forward with my students and I can not wait to see what the next course brings to the table to make me even more confident in my abilities as a teacher in the classroom.

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Dr. Michael Orey gives this definition for social learning, "Students actively engage in constructing artifacts and conversing with other students about what they are building (Laureate, 2009)." I personally like the idea of students working together to accomplish a goal or task. This is a definition that works well in my physical education class. Physical education is a subject that using collaborative and cooperative learning to help student understand the motions and functions of their bodies better. I always have students ask others in the class before asking me. I want them to be able to understand that there is more than one way to have an idea explained. I believe that peer to peer interaction can teach and reinforce ideas. There are times in which the teacher's explanation is to far over the students head for them to understand. However, sometimes a classmate can explain it right at their level.

When it comes to collaboration tools, I choose them before individual tools. In elementary, most of my tools are physical and not technology based. However, in this week's lesson I had the ability to use a tool called VoiceThread. This was a tool that I had never heard of until this class. Once I created my own thread I got excited. It was really easy to use. I uploaded a PowerPoint document. The program then changed it into a thread, then I was able to use my microphone and add my own voice. Once that was done then my classmates, started adding their comments to my thread and a network was created with my VoiceThread being the base. I really believe that this going to be an exciting adventure for my students and for me. I can't wait to see the creative way they use this tool to teach information to their classmates.

I believe that VoiceThread, YouTube, SchoolTube and other cooperative sites show their correlation to instructional strategies, by giving the student's the ability to gain knowledge from others outside of their classroom walls. Using the world as a resource for learning. Students must have the ability to learn from others that are more knowledgeable then them. "Without the social interaction with more knowledgeable others, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to use them (Orey, 2001)."

My VoiceThread:
 http://voicethread.com/?#u2327694.b2512016.i13310855   


References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism

Constructivism in Practice

While reading about the strategy of generating and testing hypotheses, I had a difficult time understanding how I could apply this type of learning in my classroom. Perhaps, I am struggling with the application process because I am a random sequential thinker. Even though one event in history may appear to have no connection to another it is through class discussions, direct instruction, and student questions that guide my teaching rather than just important dates. By using some of the components of the instructional strategy, generating and testing hypotheses, perhaps I will be able to convey my random sequential thoughts in a manor that both types of learners, random sequential and linear, are able to understand more clearly (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

The project-based learning that students are able to take part in when creating a hypothesis and then going through the process of testing each possible situation aligns beautifully with the basic principles of constructionist learning. As students decide on what type of problem needs to be solved, proven or disproven, students automatically begin taking an active part in building their own knowledge base about a topic (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). When applying the strategy generating and testing a hypothesis one might choose to do so, “In a historical investigation [where] students construct hypotheses about historical events for which there is no agreed-upon resolution and create a solution to the need” (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, page 203).

For example, if a group of students wanted to decide whether or not the United States was truly neutral during the beginning of WWI before the sinking of the United States’s ship the Lusitania. An example of a student created hypothesis might be, America was not neutral prior to the attack of the Lusitania. To prove this hypothesis, students would have to research the laws, agreements, and situations surrounding the trade routes, imports/exports from the countries, primary sources dealing with trading and communication between America and the European countries, etc. They would have to determine how much contact Germany, Great Britain, and France had with America regarding the trading of goods (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

Once the students gain an understanding of America’s position on trade, neutrality, and other similar issues, they can then begin to analyze and synthesize the information according to what they already know, unknown information that proves neutrality, contradictory information, etc. It is during this part of the problem solving process that a student would be constructing his/her personal opinion. As Dr. Orey explained, students will use both new and existing knowledge to move from disequilibration to equilibration.  The students will take the new information, combined and blend it with existing knowledge (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). In the end, students should have the information and reputable sources needed to prove or disprove that America was not neutral prior the attack of the Lusitania and the students’ regain equilibration (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009).

Problem-based learning is, “...based on a view that learning occurs through social interactions whereby an outside source can help individuals extend their learning” (Orey, 2001).  Here are some web pages that can be used for the, “historical investigation,” of America and World War I neutrality or any type of historical investigations or history projects students might be working on that encourage the use of primary sources (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

Browse many of the United State's historical documents:

  Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Library of Congress: American Memory: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

PBS: http://www.pbs.org/

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Program seven. Constructionist and Constructivist Learning Theories [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved     from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom     instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.