Elementary Teachers Share Technology Ideas

Application 4 Spotlight on Emerging Technology Online Learning

Here are my final thoughts regarding to the last eight weeks of my masters program.  This class had me create a unit plan following a format that is called the GAME plan.  I am always trying to discover a new way for my lessons to become better so that my students will be able to receive more knowledge.  The GAME plan is a very organized way of planning a lesson and there is no doubt when a teacher writes a GAME plan that they will be ready for their students when they are teaching the lesson.  I feel that the GAME plan I created is a great one to use for my classroom.  When my students learn the letter “P” this year, I will try this plan out with them to see how they do with it.

One fact that I have taken from this plan is that no matter how much you think you are ready for a lesson there is something just a little more you can do to make it better.  This plan makes you think out the process and pushes you to make the lesson great.  I now feel that I have to do this with all of my lessons because if I don’t then I am cheating my students out of some knowledge.  I will continue using this format when I am teaching.

Regarding technology integration in my classroom, I am planning on using as much technology as I can in my kindergarten class.  I feel that my students should be introduced to as much technology as they can.  When these students go through the different grade levels they will become better users to technology and give themselves a better chance to succeed in the future when they graduate.  This course showed me that it is important for everyone to use technology and I am planning on spreading this same theory.

Teaching today I feel has become more challenging than the past.  A teacher in today’s society has to do many things to have a successful school year in my eyes.  A teacher must remember to teach all of the state standards, work with all the diversity that is in the classroom, and try to increment as much technology as possible during every lesson.

This class has taught me to make a Game Plan for every lesson.  Making a Game Plan I am able to think through the whole lesson and make sure everything is the way I want it.    Having the plan I know I will be teaching a state standard along with standards and indicators on the NETS-S web site.  If all steps are followed my students should learn a lot from each of my teachings.

If I succeed in doing the game plan than my teaching with be a success and technology will be in every one of my lessons in some way.

If you have any other thought about my idea about the Game Plan please share your thoughts.

Hello colleagues, I have worked really hard in trying to meet the goals that I have set out to achieve.  When I finish creating a website where my parents are able to communicate with me easier I will feel that I have met my goal for communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.  Using programs such as Voicethread, power point and using a movie or digital camera I can have the students create a project of telling a story.  This way they would use their creative thinking and I would give them many choice what to write a story on.  I would than meet my second goal

Based on the NET-T a new goal that I would look into next would be provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching or advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.  Both of these areas I feel can be done in a kindergarten classroom where the students can benefit from it and you the information they have learned to the following years through elementary school.

 When I decide to teach these new goals of mine the approaches that I will try next to improve my learning is to contact someone out of house.  My peers and friends are reliable recourses but we come from the same society or background so we all think the same way.  Getting another opinion that is outside my circle of information can help me think from a different perspective or angle to come up with a better result.

To evaluate my GAME Plan Progress thus far I decided to stay with the idea of using the product Weebly for my class web site.  I sat down and had many conversations with IT people on doing the web site.  When I was done talking we concluded the best route that I should go was to do the site from home.  This way the school can link my site and would not have much to do with the site.

For my second standard telling a story using Voice Thread, I decided to use the suggestion that Drew gave to me.  He suggested using Moviemaker to record the students’ voices. I feel more comfortable using Moviemaker since I have used it many times.   Being that my class is in kindergarten I feel that it would also be easier for them to use Moviemaker.

Over all I feel that my lessons are effective since I have done extensive research behind it.   I was able to bounce some ideas off of other peers that have giving me some really good ideas that I never thought of using.  These suggestions were all towards me reaching my goals.  I have also learned that no matter how much you think you might know a certain topic, someone else can make you a better teacher my making a suggestion and I have to keep open minded.  This goes toward all my lessons.  What I still have to learn is how I can do my job in a timelier manner.  Sometimes you only have a day or so to get things together.  I need to get to my outcome quicker.  For what I am currently working on I do not have any questions unless there is someone out there that would like to give me some ideas.  I am keeping an open mind.  I feel that lessons already fit my current needs.

To further my GAME plan I need to find out what or where I can find an easy web site to develop my classrooms web site.  I understand that there are many sites out there that I could pay for my classroom site to be on.  I also know that there are some really good sites that are free.  I rather go the free route right now.  I was in contact with a friend of mine who gave me a site to go on called Weebly.  I guess this is a easy way to make a web site and it is free.  The only problem that I am having is I cannot use it in my school building.  The school will not give permission to go to the site.  So if I still go with this program I will have to do all the updates  from home.  I feel this is a little set back. Does anyone else have a free site that my school might have access to so I can work from school during my planning period?

For my second standard telling a story using VoiceThread, I need to pick out some stories for the students to watch or listen to first.  Then the students can retell it on VoiceThread.  I am going with the story of The Three Little Pigs.  I have many different stories of the Three Little Pigs and the different outcomes.  I am going to have the students’ retail the stories then play them back for the rest of the class.  Then as a group I will create a Venn Diagram to show how they are the same or different.  If my students are having trouble using the VoiceThread does anybody else have an idea on what I can do instead?

To further my GAME plan I need to find out what or where I can find an easy web site to develop my classrooms web site.  I understand that there are many sites out there that I could pay for my classroom site to be on.  I also know that there are some really good sites that are free.  I rather go the free route right now.  I need to make a list of these free sites that I can post my site and the benefits that come with it. (What can I do and not?)  I also need to find out from my schools technical support if my site will be locked out if I tried to access it from the school.  School is where I will be doing a lot of my updating so I believe this is a good idea.  After all of that I will have to make sure what the rules are on having a site.  What is allowed and what is not.  Before I start creating my site I would like to ask all of my peers if they have their own site and what works for them.  This way I can incorporate it into my site right away.  Right now I am at the beginning part of this plan.  I only know of one site that will help me create my own web site for free.

For my second standard telling a story using VoiceThread, I need to pick out some stories for the students to watch or listen to first.  Then the students can retell it on VoiceThread.  I need to teach the students how to use the program VoiceThread so they will feel comfortable when they start to create.  I need to as colleagues of mind their opinion on what stories are good for the students to participate in so it would be easier for them to create the VoiceThread.  Right now I am thinking on doing the stories that deal with the Three little Pigs.  There are many versions that exists and many different outcomes.

Hello colleagues, I have sat down and took a long look at the indicators in the NETS-T.  The two indicators that I would be interested in doing are first, communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.  I feel the fastest way to communicate with family members of my students and my peers are through technology.  For my parents I would like to see more involvement from them working with my students at home. I will create a web page with ideas or worksheets that the parents can down load on their computer for extra work to do when the student is home.  I would ask on this page to send in the end product after the student did the material at home and see how many students actually work at home.  After a nine week period I would see how many students did extra work.  If there was a small turn out I would then advertise my web site on other areas where the parents should be looking like the weekly calendar.

            Second indicator is promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.  By using programs like voicethread, power point and using a movie or digital camera.  I can have the students create a project of telling a story.  This way they would use their creative thinking and I would give them many choice what to write a story on.  This would be a weeklong project for my kindergarten class so I would look to see how each project was coming along as the students were working on it.  When the students are done with the project I would have them present it to the class for feedback to learn for the next project.  Please tell me, what do you think of my ideas?

     My mission at the beginning of the class was to briefly describe my personal theory of how students learn inside my classroom.  I believe that students learn in different ways.  It is my responsibility to provide the students with a variety of different materials in the classroom to allow each of the students to learn and use it to their fullest ability.  The students should be treated equally when being praised for doing good and disciplined when doing something wrong.  The students should be able to have choices whether they want to participate or learn on their own.  My theory is to emphasize that learning is a never-ending process.  I will succeed by following three areas.  First, I have to identify key developmental stages that may affect learning.  Children either assimilate or accommodate knowledge based on existing schemas.  Second, I will get a good feel of how my students will learn the best and then I will pick out a learning theory to be used and start doing my lesson planning for my kindergarten class for the next few weeks. Lastly, I will need to introduce as much technology in the class as I can.

     I feel that my personal theory is a good theory to follow.  I can see how I can concentrate on more technology in the future after exploring many new ways of teaching over the past eight weeks.  I should embrace the technology that is out there to use with my kindergarten students to intrigue them to learn more.  I had mentioned technology in my theory at the beginning of the class as the third goal to reach.  Now I see that it should not be just a goal to meet but a necessity to use in the classroom. 

     An immediate adjustment I will make to my instructional practice regarding technology integration as a result of this course is Voice Thread (social learning theories) and Concept Mapping with virtual field trips (cognitive learning theories).  Starting off with using the Voice Threads, I will post my weekly calendar on it for the parents to read and make any comments on it. This is easy for me to do and if all the parents have access to a computer then I will no longer have to print them out. This can save my school on some money for paper and the parents will be able to see what is going on without the reply of saying “I never got a calendar”.  I will also use Voice Thread when I want to compare two stories in my class. I will have the students make comments on the two stories to start off conversations in the classroom to help the understanding of each story.  Concept mapping like a Venn Diagram is “One of the simplest but most effective ways to help students compare two or more items” (Pitler & et al., 2007,p. 179) and with a virtual field trip will help me teach the students something that I was having a hard time doing before. This was explaining the different sizes of the planets in our universe. “Earth is just one of many bodies in our solar system.  What else is out there”(National Geographic)?  Yes, I have tried using different size balls and pictures but actually taking a trip that we really could not go on will really send the message home. The students can put ideas into long term memory a little easier. We do a universe week and this will be perfect for my lessons. I will do other field trips as well since our funds are extremely low for taking real field trips. I would also put the concept map and trip on my projector in my class on the InterWrite board (Smartboards) for everyone to see. This will make the trip feel more lifelike.

     Two long-term goals I would like to make in my instructional practice regarding technology integration are to have the students spend more time on computers and creating their own projects using technology.  I would like to sit down at the beginning of the year when our principal gives the teachers the schedules for the year and make a time where my students can use the computers at the computer lab.  I would like to start my students at the lab by the third week of school.  This should give the students plenty of time to get acquainted with the school and their classmates.  If I cannot get into the lab I will set some time out of the day where the students will take turns on my two computers that I have set up in the classroom.  I feel it is important for the students to start real early and become familiar with the computers.  When about seven weeks have gone by with the students learning the computers, I would like the students to start working on projects using the computers.  Some of the projects would be as easy as writing the alphabet down in order, changing the fonts of the letters, writing their names, addresses and phone numbers on a word document.  When the class gets really good at maneuvering around the computer I would love to create a Power Point presentation that the class had done together.  I will show it on the last day of school when we have our kindergarten picnic celebration.

     I always knew that technology was important for the students to learn in today’s society.  I now realize after this particular class that there is so much technology for the students to use that is needs to become a necessity that teachers should teach or introduce as much technology as they possibly can.  This will help the students know that they have options that they can use in the future. 

References

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

 National Geographic 1996-2010 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.            http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system

My assignment for this week is to give my thoughts on how instructional strategies correlate with the principles of social learning theories.  I get it and understand the idea behind social learning.  After watching  a real quick video called “The Networked Student… in plain English by Steve Dembo I totally understand.  “It did an excellent job of explaining what a truly networked student looks like. And more importantly, what the teachers’ role is for them”. (Steve Dembo)  Students now and day are looking for more ways to learn.  Teaching today’s students are very hard because information changes so rapidly in today’s world.  The best solution is to use the technology that is out there and give the students what they are starving for and to help succeed in life.  Students while using the technology can be paired up with one or two other students.  This way the students are socially asking each other questions and helping each other out.  The students are learning how to work with one another just like the real job situation.  Students now understand what they can say to each other and also how to encourage each other to do well with their studies.  Many older strategies that are in the classroom that are instructional studies do not have the depth as the new way of teaching.  Social learning is the key to the future of all classrooms.  We are not getting rid of instructional studies, we are just tweaking them to fit our needs.

References

Steve Dembo http://www.teach42.com/2008/12/06/the-networked-student-in-plain-english/

My Voice Thread is   http://voicethread.com/share/1191354/ I hope you enjoy it.