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
Hi Wayne,
ReplyDeleteThis process of taking time to identify the specific ways in which we can improve our teaching, creativity, and integration of technology has highlighted and emphasized an important point. Based on your post here I think you would agree that while some may believe allowing students to take more control of their learning with projects such as your video book brag equates to less of a role and less work for teachers in reality it is the exact opposite. Not only do we as teachers need to coordinate every aspect of projects based on student action we also need to understand every resource students may utilize in order to truly facilitate learning. Like you said, in order to do your project you will need to research the internet and improve your own iMovie skills. Such work is necessary, however, if we are to effectively integrate technology as adequate knowledge of and confidence in the use of tools are essential to such integration (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).
Overall, I believe you have outlined very worthwhile and attainable goals for yourself and your students. I like the idea of communicating with parents regularly through e-mail. Hopefully, such correspondences would become routine for you and parents and you would see more parental involvement. The only question I may have about this approach, however, is what you would do for parents who may not have access to e-mail or even the internet.
Thanks,
Ian Campbell
References:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program Number Three: Enriching content area learning experiences with technology part 1 [Webcast]. Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore, MD: Author
Wayne,
ReplyDeleteYour GAME plan is clear for communicating with students and parents. I like your idea of using Twitter to keep parents informed. I am “in the dark” when it comes to using Twitter but can understand how it could be an effective communication tool. Reining and Schouten explain, “Twitter limits messages to 140 characters so that it can be converted to SMS and texted to a mobile phone and can be seen by anyone” (2009, p. 46). There is limited privacy in using Twitter and brevity is crucial. However, you can send tweets to followers only.
I like your use of a survey/questionnaire to get feedback for evaluating yourself. In addition to outside input, I think it is vital to reflect on my practices. I would suggest reflecting on successes, failures, and everything in between. May be you can create a rubric or categories to address. For example: frequency of tweets, number of followers, emails, and email responses.
I highly recommend reading the article by Reinig and Schouten regarding twitter.
They recommend the following four steps to get started: decide on recognizable name, establish a schedule of posting, give appropriate others access to account, and promote your account (2009, p.48). You have great ideas and have a plan for improving your use of technology.
Reference
Reinig M, Schouten P. Instant Connections. International Educator (1059-4221) [serial online]. November 2009;18(6):46-48
~Jessica H.
Wayne,
ReplyDeleteI cannot say enough about the benefits of bulk emails to parents. I have to say that emphasizing communication with parents through technology has positively impacted my own teaching in great ways. Just in the last two years, I have taken the time to create class distribution lists and send weekly emails to parents about homework, upcoming tests and projects, assignment rubrics/criteria, and grade checkpoints. I am kicking myself for not starting this habit much earlier in my teaching career because it has made life so much easier. This process has established an open line of communication and trust between myself and parents and has decreased the amount of negative parent interactions tenfold.
Additionally, I am not a twitter person, but I do think your idea of using twitter to help communicate with parents is a great idea. One additional avenue I use to communicate both with parents and students is edmodo (www.edmodo.com). this website provides a class page where I can post schedules, assignments, etc. but it also has a tool I can use that allows me to send direct text messages to parents and students about homework, projects, etc. I am still playing with this program, but so far I have had very positive results. Considering how "plugged in" students are and that everything is in real time for them, this site allows me to play upon the fact that their cell phones never leave their sides (Prensky, 2008). I can send them friendly reminders with the click of the mouse, and they can no longer use the excuse that they didn't know about something.
Finally, I have not completed any video book bragging as you suggest in your post, but I think it is a great idea to connect students to their learning. I have done some video work with other topics, and the website/program I would recommend for use if Animoto (animoto.com). It's great for short videos.
Good luck with both of your goals!
Prensky, M. (2008). Turing onthe lights. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 40-45.
@ Jen
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and the suggestion of animoto, I will check it out. Ironic that I suggested Edmodo and you already use it. I guess we must thinking on the same wave length. Glad to hear the bulk email thing works for you, I'll probably be sending out my first one this week. The results should be interesting. Thanks again.
Wayne
@ Ian
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. I hadn't really thought about parents with email before because most of them have one at home or use their work email account. I do have a few parents / students with no internet at home, but they have found ways to get online at work / public library / school's media center / computers in my classroom. Thanks for the question, it really is something I should think about and I will talk to my grade level teammates this week. Thanks again.
Wayne