When looking over the National Educational Technology Standards, I can see where I still need to grow as a teaching professional. In the past two years, I have gained valuable insight and know how when using technology in my classroom. While teaching I have made a pronounced effort to digital tools and technology formats to communicate with both parents and students. I have used our school based web page to offer help and assistance throughout the school year. Parents and students can access my page to check homework, and find useful links and activities that correlate with the curriculum being taught in class. The goal is to offer interactive ways to promote student success. I recently dabbled with a blog to increase student participation and creative thinking to real world political and environmental issues.
As a teaching professional immersed in a digital world, there is one area I need to develop. I do a very good job of finding programs, links and other digital activities to help students be successful. I want to gain more knowledge and confidence designing and developing learning experiences using a wider array of digital tools. I have limited experience with cameras and video in particular, and see where this digital tool could offer students valuable experiences. I guess I never really had a personal interest, so I am not comfortable with this tool.
My game plan is to learn more about digital cameras and seek how to implement them into my classroom for educational purposes. I want to find out how to mesh this tool with parts of my 4th grade curriculum. I plan to take action by searching the internet to learn more how the tool works. I will pursue this tool on a personal level to help my professional growth. This goal will be monitored by creating a list of ways digital cameras can be used in the classroom for creative learning. I will extend and follow through by collaborating with peers and seeking out the tech coordinator at our school. I will also be looking into training at our school and start to match up how I can use this tool effectively with lessons through out the year.
One additional pursuit with technology, would be the use of blogs. I do have experience with the the use of learning blogs, however our school has restrictions and the school controlled blog slowed things down and created too much work. My goal is to search online other options to incorporate the use of blogs in class. I would like to give my students a way to problem solve, add opinions, and communicate their thoughts. I plan to investigate if there are blogs or other formats to get around school restrictions and save me time. At our school, blogs get backed up because I have to check over and submit each student's response one by one. This will be moitored by what found programs have to offer. Will they work? Is the program a more user friendly to bounce ideas and thoughts back and forth. I will seek out our tech coordinator to help and guidance on this learning tool. I want to know if I can access something that will let my students the freedowm to bounce learning ideas at a faster pace.
Jay Raines
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.
http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
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Jay,
ReplyDeleteI, too, am interested in incorporating blogs into my lessons. Your post has inspired me to be more proactive with this particular learning tool. Incorporating a digital camera is also a great idea. I have used one for a VoiceThread activity that my students created. They enjoyed the experience, and I know they would love to use the camera for other assignments. Like you, I am going to have to find more ways to include it in my lessons. Good luck with your GAME plan!
Mintzer,
ReplyDeleteWhat grade do you teach? What was the Voice THread activity your class developed? My small taste of blogs has been useful, but I need a way to bypass some of my schools operations. If I do it their way it is too time consuming. There is a NY Times site for kids where they can blog. When I taught middles school we used it for environmental issues. THis site has many topics and students can comment their opinions on a particular issue. When I model this, I tell them only to put their first name or intials ad then their block number. They then e-mail if they want, and tell me what issue they blogged too. It help me find their comments. THe kids like this. Good luck getting ivolved with student blogging.
Jay,
ReplyDeleteI teach sixth grade at an elementary school. The students created a “My Future is so Bright, I Have to Wear Shades” project. They illustrated a goal for sixth grade and a goal for their future in a pair of sunglasses. Then I posted each picture and recorded the students talking about their goals. I ran the VoiceThread during Back to School Night for the parents. It was a big success with both the parents and students.
I have been using blogs in my classroom for the past four years. The students love it, and as a teacher, I appreciate that I am finally getting a chance to hear the thoughts and views of students that were reluctant to raise their hands in class. I understand your issue with the school blog not being as user friendly and time consuming. I am having similar issues. Prior to my school offering blogs I had used http://edublogs.org/ Unfortunately, we are now required to use the school blogging site. If you have flexibility in your options of blogging, I highly recommend this site (plus it is free).
ReplyDeleteJay,
ReplyDeleteDo you have to use a particular school blogging website or can you use a different site? There are a lot of other great blogging sites that you could use. The only concern I have is the fact that you have to accept and review the students comments one by one. That does take forever. If you find a blog that you can see them all at once, please share that with us,because that would be a huge time saver. Good Luck!
KatieV,
ReplyDeleteThe only site I have found is the NY Times for Kids site. This site has a learning blog for students to express their opinions to world and environmental concerns. Students can blog with other students. I ask them to e-mail me and let me know when they respond to this site. Other than that, I am still in search for a quicker way to blog with my students.
Mintzer,
ReplyDeleteYour activity for Back to School Night sounds like an exciting time. Parents like to see technology being used in classrooms. It shows you care to help their child keep up with the immersion of technology. Nice idea.
Jay
Jay, I like your idea about the blogs. Our school also has a slow way of handling incoming blogs. We have one tech adviser/administrator for the whole district so he's not always available to help. I talked to him this summer and he mentioned (and I heard it mentioned in some of the resource video from this week) A site called: Moodle. I only know a little about it but it seems to be a good way of having a school web page and being able to to do blogs, videos, etc. Are you familiar with it? Our tech administrator is suppose to get books on it if he remembers.
ReplyDelete