Monitoring the GAME - sort of...

Walden Classmates:

I can't speak for all of you, but my district has this week off and I really need this catch-up time.  Not just for sleep, but for my own classes, Walden stuff and also that thing called life.

As my school is closed, I don't have much going on for my GAME, but there are a few updates.  First, the Media Specialist didn't know anything at all about a video book brag idea, let alone a rubric for one.  She did offer to let me have the videos / finished products play on a loop on one of the Media Center's TV's.  I'll probably end up using http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ - this was suggested in our text (pg. 157)

As for sitting in with the TV production / studio teacher,  I got a reluctant 'yes' on that from my administrator and was told I could only do it once or twice. The teacher told me after that he would help me with whatever I wanted so that is going to end up being part of my fall-back plan.  Importantly, my son is home from college this week and he knows far more about iMovie than I do.  If I can drag him away from turkey and football, maybe he can help his old man out.

On the communication end, I sent out my bulk email about the report cards and got a lot of 'Thank you's' back. I only had one email bounce back as bad, and I picked up one more Twitter follower. So I guess this worked out fairly well. But again, as this is a no school week, things may change next week when we are back in action and I email again.  This monitoring thing is going to take more than just one week.

Hope you all had a good few days off and rested up.

Wayne

GAME - Action time !

Walden Classmates, it's time for some action.  Reviewing, my GAME plan revolved around two parts, having my students create a video book / author brag and also for myself to use emails and Twitter more to better communicate with the parents of my students.

For the video book brag, I have spoke with the studio / TV production teacher and asked him if I could spend some time in his room during my planning period brushing up on iMovie.  I am very rusty with this and feel that I need a refresh here if I am going to work with students doing this in my class. He gave me a green light, but he wants to run it by our administrator before I actually start,  I also spoke with my school's Media Specialist / Librarian to share my project idea and also to see if she might know of any worksheet / rubric / assessment thing the students could use when researching their book possibilities. I'm probably going to have to wait until after the Thanksgiving break to get an answer on this. If she doesn't have one / can't find one, I'll have to make my own.  Finally, I plan to send an email out to our district's Reading Department's email conference asking if any one out there may have done a similar type of project in the past. I am going to wait until after the Thanksgiving break to do this so that it doesn't get pushed down the list of current emails and become forgotten.  Also, my entire district is off all of next week due to budget cuts and I want my email to be on top when we all return to work on Monday, November 28th.

For my improved communication goal, I have compiled all of the email addresses for my parents into a folder that I can now drop into my 'send to' box on my emails with just a click. I actually have a bulk email going out tomorrow as 1st Marking Period Report Cards go home tomorrow afternoon. Also, I added my Twitter  address to the signature of my school email account and wrote it on the board below the class website address. Hopefully, with this added exposure, I will pick up a few more followers.

That's it so far, I hope you are all doing well implementing some of your ideas into action.  Have a good week.

Wayne

Walden classmates - GAME plan ideas - Week 2

These are my initial thoughts on my GAME plan for this course and the upcoming school year.

My GAME plan contains two parts. One is for the students, and one is for myself.  For myself, I would like to improve the way I communicate with students and parents using the technology that I have available to me.  This addresses the ISTE NETS standard 3; sub-section C, Modeling Digital-Age Work and “communicating relevant information and ideas effectively to students and parents using a variety of formats."

My GAME plan for helping my students use more technology in school is to have them create a video book brag / sales pitch for a novel or author that they highly recommend.  This addresses ISTE NETS standard 2, sub-section A, Designing and Developing Digital-Age Learning Experiences that “adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity”

The actions that I plan to take at this point relate to the two separate goals.  For myself, I plan to use Twitter and bulk emails to my parents to communicate information, resources, and educational articles and stories.  Meeting this goal will force me to actively look for educational articles that I can share with parents. I will be able to monitor this by the number of my followers and the responses that I get to my emails to parents. Finally, at some point later in the school year, I will have to do some sort of survey of my parents to see if they actually read and used the information I tweeted and emailed.  In this evaluation stage I guess that I would use one of the public survey / Internet questionnaires that are available.  This would also be a learning skill for me.

The actions I will need to take to create a lesson / unit on video book bragging will require some research on my part.  Most will be on the Internet, and some will be with my colleagues at my school, and also here at Walden.  Also, before I begin this activity with the students, I will need to brush up on my iMovie skills so that I can better assist my students in class.  This will be a self-monitoring process that will be related to how well my students perform and the projects that they produce.  As the students are working on their projects, I will observe their strengths and weaknesses and try to help them were possible.  I suspect that most of the things I learn in this process will be used to modify the lesson / unit for the next time I try it. Finally, in the evaluation stage, I suspect that I would work with several students to find out their perceptions of how the unit went and what could be done to improve it. Their insight could prove to be quite refreshing.

Walden classmates, if any of you have ever done any sort of video projects I would welcome your advice on this matter.  Also, if any of you are active Tweeters, I would be glad to follow you to see how you use this form of media.

Wayne

Resources:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx