It has been so long since I last wrote here. The teaching life is busy...I've had my students write blogs, and I have read theirs, and tried to keep up with colleagues, articles, new learning, classes, and so on, so I have really barely had time to write myself. Now I'm in the final couple of weeks with the Teachers for Global Classrooms course, I'm starting to realize how important it is to just reflect, and understand how I want to apply everything I'm learning about. I've had some great responses from the teachers I'm in contact with in terms of the mythology project I've embarked on - or we have embarked on, now, since at least three of them are fully on board now. Kankam from Ghana, Helen from Ukraine, and Sowmya from India. What I am finding difficult is getting the whole piece coordinated, because of course the other three teachers have their own ideas, but I think once we get the students connected and we start exchanging stories, we can find our course with more confidence. I already feel less tentative than before since I have seen their strong response. Sowmya wote that they are celebrating Diwali, and that she wants to get her students to dramatize one of their myths in a performance, so I can't wait to see that. Helen has prepared letters with her students, and voiced the concern that their English is not that great - well, it's certainly better, I told her, than our Ukrainian! Perhaps we can pick up a phrase or two. So during the course of this unit, I'm going to return here and keep posting, so I can keep the course charted.

Moving Forward with Technology Integration

Student Accessibility: An Essential Component of Leadership in Technology Adoption

One of the most important realizations that I had during this course was the reason for the failure of schools to effectively promote technology integration in the classroom: they were not, in fact, trying to integrate technology. Instead, they were attempting to adapt technology to curricula and methodologies that effectively were not altered. As Christensen and Horn (2008) put it, they tried “to cram the innovation into its existing operating model to sustain what it already does.This is the predictable course, the logical course—and the wrong course” (p. 14). In my school, most teachers have been using computers, if at all, for students to type up reports and complete research. We have a number of laptop carts that go largely unused because teachers have not been trained properly on how to use or take care of them. There is also a certain amount of frustration because the laptops do not hold a charge for very long, so they cannot be used all day among the different classes a middle school teacher meets every day.

This is where the concept of disruptive technology becomes very important. If I can be funded through a grant to have at least a class set of iPads, it is possible that the situation, at least for my classes and for other teachers in my department who care to learn and share with me, could be turned around. The battery life on an iPad is supposed to be about 10 hours, which would eliminate the problem of having to recharge computers. There are so many advantages: iPads are lightweight, fast, can be used as e-readers, can be used as cameras, for videoconferencing – the possibilities are fascinating. What is also useful to school environments are the built-in accessibility features for students with disabilities like poor vision and dyslexia. Possibly there are other tablet-type technologies that are more cost-effective and have similar capabilities. The reason they qualify as disruptive technology is that they are less expensive than either purchasing another cart of laptops or buying iPads, because they have certain limitations, such as fewer applications or a less coordinated suite of applications; all of the handhelds have reduced word processing capability, although I am sure that will improve over time.

With all this, what I am saying is that in order to proceed as a change agent for technology integration in my school, my students need to have access to reliable tools on a consistent basis; that said, the first effort I make needs to be in securing that access. This summer I am researching and writing grants to that end. Next, I need to make my students' work available to colleagues and administrators; I already have some collaborators set up for the next school year, and hopefully more will join in. The project in which we are collaborating is a grade-level wiki; this year my students developed a wiki based on a novel from the core curriculum, and next year I plan to implement my ideas for the mythology wiki for seventh grade students. One of the first ideas I had was to incorporate machinima from Second Life into the wiki, but I realize that students must be over 13 years of age to participate in Second Life, and even then their movement within the MUVE is restricted. I am trying to find some similar technology to use; Pixton and Go Animate so far look like the most likely candidates,since there are no age restrictions.

In terms of leading my colleagues and others in technology innovation and full integration, I have long reflected on the following statement by Fullan (2002): “An organization cannot flourish--at least, not for long--on the actions of the top leader alone. Schools and districts need many leaders at many levels. Learning in context helps produce such leaders” (p. 20). In fact. I am and have always been a hands-on learner, so learning in context harmonizes completely with my leadership style. I am pairing up with another language arts teacher next year to head literary competitions, and we have already begun to discuss how to use technology to make the process run more smoothly and become more exciting for the students: for example, interviewing student authors and broadcasting the videos, both to the school and on a language arts wiki, and using those techniques to disseminate recordings by the authors or by others of their own works. Having students read their own work aloud is also a great editing technique. I am also going to participate in technology workshops with administrators and interested teachers. I am going to pioneer a Ning-based classroom network this coming school year, and I will invite other teachers, as well as administrators, to view my progress. This brings me back to my first point: it is absolutely essential to find the resources for students to gain accessibility; while many students have access and reliable Internet service at home, many others, including many ELL students who are from immigrant families, simply do not.

References

Christensen, C., & Horn, M. (2008). How do we transform our schools? Education Next, 8(3), 12–19.
Fullan, M. (2002). The change leader. Educational Leadership, 59(8) ,16–20.

Online Learning Modules

Reflecting on Differentiation: My Classroom Practice

Every year, among my students there are a few who enjoy reading and read at a much faster rate than the other students. One of the resources that I have come to value during this course and those preceding it a wiki. According to research done by de Pedro Puente (2007) wikis have proven effective in enhancing the experiential learning and the collaborative knowledge-building skills of students by providing various platform for interaction. I now have two wikis in my classroom, one for 7th grade students, and one for 6th grade students; each wiki is dedicated to a core curriculum novel, and the initial work on the wikis was done by students like the ones I have described. On Monday morning, I am presenting these sites to my fellow language arts teachers as part of our professional development program, and I am hoping to draw some of them in to participate in the wikis, and join me next year in creating a school-wide wki for student exploration of literature.

Other students in my classes have gradually joined in, using tools like Voki, Voice Thread, Slide Rocket and Glogster to create pages that illustrate, query, and discuss aspects of the novels. As a result, I am experiencing a natural process of differentiation, in which students are choosing their sub-topics and their means of expressing opinions and discussing literature online. As this is my first real experience with using wikis, there are some glitches and many things still to learn, but so far the experience has been highly positive. I have made a real effort to apply the UDL guidelines of providing multiple means of presentation, expression, and engagement in my lessons.

This past week I have used differentiation in implementing the lesson plan I wrote last week, using Visuwords and Learner's Dictionary, an online offshoot of Merriam-Webster for English language learners, for students to explore vocabulary such as “external”. “internal” and “reflection”, as part of a new chapter in their year-long autobiographical project. Stemming from the 6th grade curriculum, this lesson prepares students to compare and contrast the way others see them with the way they see themselves. Some students enjoy being photographed, so I took two different pictures of them, one posed and one random, as they kept the assignment in mind. One student who had been disengaged for weeks suddenly came to life, and completed planning for the chapter by describing his two photographs. This turned out to be quite successful with many students, as they were literally able to “see” themselves, and then make the transition to description. This moving from the literal to the abstract is an important part of development during middle school years. Other students were interested in using electronically-produced graphic organizers, and they chose among Inspiration, and two different organizers from Read Write Think (readwritethink.org), one a Venn diagram.

Before they began the planning, however, they used the Promethean board to do a similar comparison, using adjectives to describe how Byron from The Watsons Go To Birmingham sees himself compared to how his brother Kenny sees him, finding similarities and differences. They also used the board to discover transitional words used for comparison. This generated some discussion, and students worked in pairs and small groups to decide on which adjectives were common to both points of view; they also generated more words ,which were shared with the whole class. Groups were arranged by mixed ability levels. As Sabia (2008) states, “This is a critically important aspect of UDL — it recognizes that ALL students learn differently. Therefore, students with disabilities do not have
to feel that they are the only ones with learning differences” (p. 15).

Since many of my students are auditory learners, I played Mp3s of the novel, interrupting for questioning and response; I allowed students who were already doing so to read ahead during this time.This allowed them the space to freely learn at their own rate. Since I do not have enough books to send home with every student, I made the recordings available on the class blog, and gave CDs to students who do not have access to the Internet at home. Some students do have the book at home (having purchased or borrowed it from a library). The school is purchasing more books for next year, although I feel it would be wise to invest in iPads or e-readers of some kind. Amazon Kindle, for example, not has a lending library which would make investing in e-readers all the more cost effective. I am going to apply for another grant through our district foundation to acquire either ipads or e-readers of some kind. I also plan to use the UDL tools for creating a class profile and for setting goals.

All in all, this course has prepared me to truly integrate technology with the curriculum. I had been struggling to understand just how to do that, but with the introduction to UDL that this course has provided, along with the deeper understanding of how to differentiate with the use of technology, I feel far better equipped to deal with all of my students on a more individualized basis.

References
Canter, L., & Winberry, K. (Directors). (2001). Program 2: Introduction to learning styles, part two [DVD]. In C. Arnold (Producer), Learning differences: Effective teaching with learning styles and multiple intelligences. Los Angeles, CA: Laureate Education, Inc.

Curtis, C. P. (1995). The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963. New York: Delacorte Press.

de Pedro Puente, X. (2007) New method using wikis and forums to evaluate individual contributions in cooperative work while promoting experiential
learning: Results from preliminary experience. Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on Wikis. Retrieved from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2007/_publish/dePetro_WikiSym2007_ContributionsInCooperativeWork.pdf

National Universal Design for Learning Task Force. http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/index.shtml

Sabia, R. (2008) Univeral design for learning and meaningful access to the curriculum. TASH Connections. 14-21. Retrieved from http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/UDL_TASH_Connections.pdf

UDL Class Profile Maker. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/classprofile.cfm

UDL Goal Setter. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlgoalsetter.cfm

Cultural Inventories

Recently I developed a pair of cultural inventories that I used in a classroom project based on autobiographical writing. The first one is actually completed after students have learned about and discussed the concept of culture as an iceberg, with the surface or visible part of culture represented as the tip of the iceberg, and the deeper, "invisible' aspects of culture as the part that remains below the surface. Here is the link to the file.

Click here to take survey

Reflection

My GAME plan was developed to enable me to respond more effectively to student lack of self-confidence about the use of technology, and to their resistance to work collaboratively with anyne except their best friends; to increase my level of engagement with peers who either want to know more about how to use technology in their classrooms, or who have information to share with me; and to engage parents more directly in classroom projects as participants, rather than as bystanders or peopele who micromanage their children by doing their work for them.

In the first area, I was able to encourage students who had never used GarageBand before to try it, however I left options such as using Powerpoint and delivering a face-to-face presentation or using Voice Thread open. Most students were able to successfully complete projects, however there was one class that remained highly resistant, and with whom I had more difficulty. I resolved this problem by assigning peer mentors who had already completed projects to assist them with the technology. In this sense they were exposed to collaborative learning as a necessary approach. The problem with this class was that probably the project was too overwhelming in the sense that they were unused to research projects, so they had the double burden of learning how to conduct research as well as learning ew technological skills.

I have contributed to the technological conversation in my department by introducing peers to blogging, to converting printable documents into documents that can be completed online, and by showing them how to use Google Docs and programs like Wordle, which students really enjoy. In addition, I presented a workshop at a district symposium on innovative ideas, was able to overcome technical difficulties, and showed teachers a simple blog site called Kidblog (kidblog.org).

In terms of parent involvement, the research project my students were working on was about their respective cultures; some students turned in amazingly detailed work about their family heritage; one boy filmed his mother making arepas, a Colombian snack. Since i love to travel, I allowed some of my students to use photographs I took in Rome and Costa Rica. One of my Italian students is interested in theater, so I suggested that she do a project on Commedia dell'Arte; it turned out that her mother years ago had dome some wonderful drawings of all the principal characters, which I scanned for her Voice Thread project. For the next phase of our yearlong autobiographical project, a couple of parents have already committed to communicating with our class via Skype about the work they do. What i have learned through this course is that flexibility and adaptability are key to going beyond the limits imposed by walls, and allowing the imagination rein.

In terms of immediate adjustments to my instructional practice, I am creating a wiki with my 7th graders about a book they are reading. We began by brainstorming questions they have about the book, and i am assigning research and blog discussions based on their questions. Throughout the course I have been steadily applying new information to classroom instruction, and I have learned much from reading the blogs and wiki pages of my peers. My ELL students have been using Inspiration to plan their writing prompts; I can see that having the visual in front of them really helps them to organize their thoughts.

This has been a very enjoyable and informative course, and I am sure that information I have learned here will follow me throughout my professional career.

Game Plan and NETS-S

The GAME Plan has helped me value the importance of setting specific goals for students in terms of their proficiency with technology and their progress in developing literacy and collaborative skills. Students can be the most critical of audiences for their peers, but with a rubric for peer evaluation this process rests within parameters that are safe for students who are sensitive to criticism and yet want constructive feedback. This is one of the wonderful parts of social networking: the ability to share in the editing, proofreading, and finally, in revising a piece of writing, or any other creation.


When students hear their voices for the first tine, they are sometimes shocked or surprised, so digital storytelling is a wonderful opportunity for them to get to themselves on many different levels. One of the prerequisites for understanding other cultures is in fact to understand as much as possible about oneself, and one's immediate environment. The collaborative process is actually uses prior knowledge of self as a springboard to discover more about the world, rippling out from self to include many other cultures. This a key goal of the Communication and Collaboration group of NETS-S standards. I will constantly try to develop this awareness of our microcosm of world diversity in the classroom.

Problem-solving and decision-making area also important survival elements in our world, and teaching this skill is critical if we are to guide students to construct a world that is sustainable, both in terms of the environment and in terms of global cooperation and social responsibility. If I can model to my students how to communicate effectively and how to use technology as a fast and efficient tool for communication. One of the NETS_T standards sets addressed in my personal GAME plan is Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership, and this is reflected both in various standards in NETS-S, such as collaboration, digital citizenship and critical thinking.

It is also essential that students grasp the concept that while the Internet is an invaluable resource for information and creating knowledge, it is not always infallible, and that guidelines are in place on how to navigate safely and successfully through waters that are at times turbulent. Helping students to acquire valid research skills is an extremely important part of being an educator, whether these skills are used to find the best possibile product or to develop a cure for disease.

GAME Plan Progress

This past Saturday I participated in an annual "idea expo" set up by my county's education foundation. This was the first time I participated as a presenter of an idea for which I was awarded a grant. For the first time, I found myself in front of other teachers, showing them how to blog on a website that I use with my students, showing them also how to create a Voice Thread, and discussing how I integrated this technology into my idea, which is a year-long student autobiography incorporating reflective, narrative and expository writing as well as a research-based multimedia presentation.

During the same day I went to workshops presented by other teachers, and understood more about how to integrate technology quickly into my subject area. Going back to the goals I set for myself in terms of the NETS-T standards fro engaging in professional growth and leadership, I feel proud of the fact that I was able to get over my fears about delivering materials to adults, and in spite of technical difficulties at the site (a local university) was able to present my ideas and even fuse them with tips i had picked up during the day from other presenters. I feel that I extended my learning by adding to my presentation a wealth of ideas I gleaned from my master's course, and I openly told the attendees that I had just learned some of the tools I was presenting, and that I am constantly trying out new resources.

I am still working on seamlessly infusing technology into the curriculum, and on the collaborative work with students. I noticed that students really appreciate it when teachers work with them instead of limiting themselves to delivering information; this is how I am interpreting the NETS standard that reads, "model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students." I have core groups of students in each of my classes that have really bought into collaborative online learning, but there are other students who have not, and my goal is to reach those students as well. I was able to work closely together with a group of 7th grade boys whose assignment was to analyze a commercial, design a new commercial for the same product with a different audience, analyze it according to its persuasive elements, and then make the commercial. They were having a very difficult time getting started, but when I showed them the basics in GarageBand and iMovie, they took over and produced a fine piece of work, in which one of them was even filmed doing a backflip as part of their script. Some of the analysis was sacrificed, though, and my goal is to ensure that none of the content gets lost in the joy of using the resources.

I still really need to work with getting more of my colleagues on board with blogging and social networking: one major stumbling block here is that most teachers, unlike me, do not have a laptop cart in their rooms, and are usually unable to gain access to one. The media center, with its bank of computers, is very difficult to book, which leaves most teachers with virtually no access for students. I really would like to find the mega-grant to change this situation, so if any of you have some practical suggestions, please let me know. So I suppose a "new' (or rather, renewed) goal is to find the means to update technology in our school, since it is threatened with "extinction" (lack of funding).

Maintaining the GAME Plan

I just found out that a conversation I had with my principal some months ago bore some fruit. I had mentioned Voice Thread to her, and said that I think it was unreasonable to have this tool blocked by our district. She asked me to email her the link for this program, and then I did not hear anything more about it. Since my students are working at the moment on research projects with multimedia products, I thought that I would see if Voice Thread was still unavailable: it was finally available, and today I was able to show my students how to use it. For some 6th graders, creating a podcast from Garageband or even a Powerpoint was daunting, so they were happy to have an alternative that was somewhat easier, yet just as creative. This is another way for them to collaborate as learners, thinkers, and writers engaged in the writing process; what this means for my Game plan is that I have gained an effective tool to utilize with my goal of having students work cooperatively. I still need to become better acquainted with the program and become better at using it.

I also subscribe to the We Are Teachers feed, and read ideas there; this week I joined a competition with the objective of coming up with a lesson plan that incorporates visual arts with language arts.
(http://www.weareteachers.com/ideas/partnerask?grantId=49). I feel this moves my GAME plan forward because it motivates me to read about the ideas of other teachers who are integrating technology into their lesson plans, and at the saem time share my own ideas.

New questions that have arisen in the course of working on this project with my students are that, while two classes are highly motivated and have become used to thinking more independently, one class needs far more scaffolding in terms of developing "inner" timetables because they are more intimidated by the prospect of constructing their own work, and at the same time they find it difficult to work together collaboratively. I am going to have incorporate some small group activities that have nothing to do with their projects; what Ertmer terms "posthole" activities. It almost seems that I am going backwards, but this may be the only way to go forward.

Ertmer, P., & Simons, K. (Spring 2006). Jumping the PBL implementation hurdle: Supporting the efforts of K-12 teachers. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 1(1), 40-54. Retrieved from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=ijpbl.

How is My Game Plan Going?

In the first area of focus, getting students to work together collaboratively and creatively, I feel i have made some progress in the last couple of weeks. For example, we have a school-wide spelling bee every year,of which the first two rounds are completed on Scantrons, as I read sentences containing the spelling words. To practice, I set up teams of students who used word parts and other strategies to make meaning of the spelling words, and they competed in a kind of collaborative bee, in teams. Since I have some students who have difficulty with understanding print, and some with very limited vocabulary who do not understand how to arrive at correct pronunciation of difficult words, I set them up with print-to-text programs on the computer so they could become pronunciation experts and teach the others how to properly say some of the difficult words. In addition, students in my class are now teaching each other how to use develop research questions, how to use search engines to conduct research, and how to use Bib.me.org both to gather notes and create their bibliographies. In another class they are learning about the persuasive language of advertising, and are creating their own commercials in video form using advertising techniques and claims; at the same time they are developing an awareness of audience by using images to target a specific audience (usually kids their age). I still need to get us to collaborate with other classes outside our own walls, but I still have faith that that will happen late this year. Some ideas I have is to use virtual field trips and to use Skype as a communication tool, possibly with a parent in their workplace since one of my main goals is to explore careers.

In terms of the second area of focus, engaging in professional growth and leadership, I have been con a campaign to introduce teachers in my school to tools like Delicious, online document storage and sharing, and basic blogsites they can use with their students. I have spent a few hours in the last week doing just that. I also posted soem of the text-to-speech mp3s of spelling words made by my students on the Language Arts communication board, and shared what I had done with my colleagues at out learning community. One major stumbling block I have run into and which so far remains unresolved is that I noticed some time ago that at work we are using an outdated version of Firefox, but every time I tried to download a new version I would receive an error message saying that I did not have enough privileges. I spoke with the technology expert at our school, and he told me to call the district help desk. I made the call, and was on the phone for almost an hour, while the tech on the other end used remote access and all kinds of Uber-passwords, to try the download, to no avail. Finally I received an email saying that the situation was server-related and actually depended on the tech expert at our school. I forwarded the email to him, but have received no reply.Check but not mate -I'm going to keep pressing on to find a solution. I also discussed with a science teacher how we could find grants to replace the dying laptops in our carts, which is another issue. There is no money apparently to replace kaput batteries.

All in all, though, I am optimistic that things will change. Our principal is rather technology-oriented, although she has relegated all grant-writing to teachers, who typically have the least time for it. At least she allowed me to have a laptop cart in my room, and I am very grateful for that.

Resources and Information for My Game Plan

In order to assist students in working together collaboratively I would like to build a wiki where they can post research projects, blog, communicate with students in other classrooms. The first and primary obstacle that I and other teachers in my school are facing is the dwindling availability of technology resources. We have a number of laptop carts but the batteries are one by one dying, and there are no funds to replace them; so a priority is to research grants and apply for funding for technology, together with my peers and colleagues. Also the answer may not lie with more laptops, as there may be a less expensive solution. This is one real-world issue that students may be interested in collaborating as problem-solvers.

I need to tap into the wealth of experience among parents and the possibilities of engaging their help as expert speakers, as well as other professionals in the community who may be knowledgeable about topics that students are interested in; through the use of Skype virtual interviews are possible when face-to-face encounters are not. I need to develop genuine collaborations with teachers in other classrooms, even on other continents, that are tailored to the actual needs of our students and not "pre-fabricated" to suit the needs of someone else. I also need to prepare my students for encounters with cultures that are different from their own by using some of the lessons in the Building Bridges curriculum from the Peace Corps as discussed in Chapter 7 of our course text, found online at http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/publications/bridges/. Videos are also informative and assist both visual and auditory learners.

Collaboration among middle school students is never easy, yet it is a crucial time for them to learn the value of positive social interaction. By beginning with small assignments, using tools such as rubrics, reflective assignments, and graphic organizers that assist them with developing collaborative skills, I can gradually increment the amount of time they can work together

In terms of keeping up with the latest innovations in educational technology, I subscribe to some RSS feeds that I read on an ongoing basis, but I need to develop a formal means of assessing what I read about and try out, such as a reflective journal of technology integration. This will also be beneficial to my goal of sharing my knowledge with my colleagues at school.

In terms of evaluation, the tools at my disposal currently are the remote response system that is part of the Promethean technology in my classroom, and the classroom blog; I can canvass students to get valuable feedback as well as brainstorm ideas, and the results from the response system can be immediately stored in an Excel file on my laptop. The blog is useful also for student reflections on the steps they are taking in projects and for commenting and providing advice for editing or additional information among students, and between students and me.

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

My Game Plan

After reviewing the NETS_T standards on the International Society for Technology in Education website, I feel that two areas in which I have made considerable progress over the past few years have been are Model Digital Age Work and Learning, and Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility. With my peers, with parents, and with teachers I communicate frequently via email; with my students I communicate both via email when not in the classroom and through classroom blogs.For me, teaching digital responsibility and safety is crucial, so it is the first item on the agenda when I have embarked with students on inquiry and problem-solving projects; I have also attempted collaborations with teachers and students in other classrooms, although I would still like to achieve more in terms of true global collaboration.

Two areas in which I know I need further development and a higher sense of self-confidence are 1) Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity and 2)Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership.

In terms of goal setting for the first area,g, my goals are to enable students to work together collaboratively to work on solutions to real-world problems, to consistently engage students in reflective assessments of their own work, and to provide opportunities for students and me to collaborate with colleagues, professionals, and other members of the community both in virtual and face-to-face situations, in order to explore possible, innovative solutions to these problems.

To achieve these goals, the actions I will take are to develop effective strategies for collaborative learning among groups of students, so that communication among them will be authentic and safe, and students will become self-directed learners, with the sound understanding of my role as facilitator and guide.Students need to know that their attempts at creativity will not be thwarted, and at the same time they need to be guided so that eventually their creative efforts will be productive. I also need to expand my circle of online collaborators, and develop more relationships with parents and others who can be invited to speak with my students as the need and opportunities arise.

Formative assessments are an essential part of the monitoring process, as are continuous adjustments to my instructional strategies and continuous adjustments on the part of students to the way they learn and process information. Observing students' response to learning situations I will assess whether my strategies have been effective, or whether i need to re-teach, making the necessary adjustments so that students will learn the targeted content.

Evaluation of my instructional strategies and style is an important part of my professional growth. By assessing whether students have met the learning goals set for them, I can determine what new path to pursue if there are gaps in student achievement. By gaining informal feedback from students and through reflective observation, I can also determine if the assessment or the goals need to be modified.

The second area in which I want to become more confident and proficient is that of engagement in professional growth and leadership. My goals in this respect are to convince my department and others in my school that technology integration is not only important and more engaging for the students, it is also necessary, and to promote the use of electronic whiteboards not only as an extension of the traditional role of disseminating information, but also as interactive tools that assist the growth of students as self-directed learners.

Actions I will take are to continue and accelerate my recently started initiative of posting technology tips and tools on the language arts shared email board, and to share and demonstrate gains made through technology in my classroom, such as the use of blogs,and multimedia and collaborative projects.I also will keep abreast of the latest ideas, software and online tools by participating in blogs and forums with other professionals in education.I would like to see tools like Voice Thread become available in my district, where they are currently blocked.this means deliberate advocacy on my part, and participation in negotiations with district technology experts.

I will monitor my progress in this area by asking my peers for feedback to presentations and shared projects. I will also incorporate new learning into my lesson plans and curriculum, and evaluate whether new tools and initiatives are working in my classroom. Students are an excellent barometer for whether new ideas are successful or not; there are also different ways of implementing the same digital tools that work for different groups of students. In this pioneering age, much of this can be learned through experimentation prior to presenting them in the classroom, and through trial and error with the students.


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.

[R01] Three basic principles. (n.d.). HKU Philosophy. Retrieved January 13, 2011, from http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/creative/creative.php

Course Reflection on Integrating Learning and Technology in Classroom Instruction

Although on the whole I still agree with my philosophy of teaching as expressed in the first week of this course, I have learned some very interesting ideas that have been essential to its modification. During the past few weeks, I have gained insight into some concepts that I previously instinctively agreed with and had some theoretical basis for supporting. Now, however, I have more solid grounds than ever to back up some of the things that I have learned, through my teaching practice, are effective.

For example, Paivio's theory of dual coding helps to explain why the addition of visual images is such a powerful tool for learning (Laureate, 2009). Although I felt that virtual field trips are fun and visually exciting, experiential learning theory has made very clear for me just how new learning is incorporated into prior knowledge through active student participation (Orey, 2001). After reading articles on mind-mapping, I can appreciate its value as a cognitive tool; even though my methods of planning are far more random and chaotic, I know that many of my students require a much higher degree of structured organization as well as clearly-delineated presentation, in terms of creating visual and aural connections (Hartley, cited in Smith, 1999).

In addition, I have found myself opening up to social networking as an everyday tool, since I have found the Delicious site to be indispensable in the past two months. Although I have experimented with using blogging as a learning tool in the past year, I feel that there are ways I can make improvements that will encourage further and more in-depth participation on the part of students. (Pitler, 2007).

For example, up until now I have been the primary question generator on blogs that respond to literature. Although my questions seem perfectly clear and reasonable to me, my students in their particular stage of development may draw a blank. I noticed that when I asked students to generate their own questions, there was more dialogue and reciprocal discussion, rather than students attempting to answer a question and worrying about whether they had the “right” answer. When the discussion is student initiated, they feel more empowered to correct each other's perspective if anyone is completely lost. This year I am also planning on creating a wiki, and students need to feel as though they will have some control over content; there are also some students who need to feel confident enough to take part, and having the responsibility of creating a discussion topic during a given week may be a confidence booster.
Just this week I attended a summer seminar on Promethean boards. My colleagues from school who also attended had the same reaction as I did: we have barely scratched the surface in using or equipment. Since this system is available to me already in my classroom, and with my new knowledge on dal coding, I am going to spend a good part of the summer developing lessons that will be truly interactive and engaging to students. I plan to make far more use of the interactive remote “voting” devices that are part of the equipment(ActivExpression): for formative assessment, for surveys, and for eliciting student response in an anonymous form so that even students who never speak or raise their hands in class will be actively engaged. With Promethean, responses can be converted into Excel files, so that later I can review individual student responses, for evaluation and for planning differentiated instruction. I occasionally did that this past year, but I was still using a software version that was sometimes difficult in that students all had to answer in the same time frame, whereas with the new software, responses can be self-paced. I also want to train students to use the board in various ways so that they can create their own reviews and assessments.

One major long-term goal I have is to develop continuous distance relationships with classrooms in other parts of the country and the world. My students too often know little to nothing about their own state, let alone the rest of the world. In order to prepare them for contact with students in another country, I would introduce different cultural perspectives through literature, conduct surveys using ActivExpression about their knowledge of their own culture, and they would design surveys to give to their families. The results of these surveys would be compared and contrasted through discussion and the use of spreadsheets, so they could get a good view of a cultural cross-section of the school. The school family counselor has mentioned that she would like to collaborate by helping students with interviewing techniques. I have asked the principal, who enjoys making discoveries about technology, to review the Voice Thread website; with her support I would like to lobby to have it removed from the district restrictions list, since this site would be wonderful for students to learn about each other and their cultures. Since our laptop computers are nearing the end of their battery lives, I am actively involved in writing technology grants, so sooner or later I will hopefully “strike gold.”

Once the getting-to-know-you phase has been established among my students and between them and their distance correspondents, I would like to develop projects that deal with how to greatly reduce negative social interactions (bullying, negative peer pressure, fighting) among middle school students. This is still an issue of paramount concern in our school, as I imagine it is in many other places; I feel that by collaborating with many other students, mine would learn not only how to interact in the most positive ways, they would also be in a position to supply advice and information to others. By sharing their views and findings, they will create their own knowledge base (Rogoff, cited in Kim, 2001). My feeling is that students can be a great support to administrators who struggle to deal with these same problems, and eventually can be part of the problem-solving team, becoming key players in the school-wide improvement plan. By creating a wiki in which parents can also take part, and reaching out to parents whose first language is not English by publishing articles in Spanish and Haitian-Creole on the wiki, there is a greater possibility of one hundred percent student and community buy-in.

As can be seen, my goals for integrating technology into my classroom practice hinge upon creating lessons and opportunities that will engage students in experiential as well as reflective learning; they also involve expanding the classroom walls to develop wider partnerships with classrooms and organizations outside the school. By accomplishing these goals, I will be preparing students for work in a world that is increasingly based on social interconnectivity through technology and collective problem-solving.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Cognitive learning theories. Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology Baltimore: Pearson

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.

Smith, M. K. (1999) 'The cognitive orientation to learning', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-cognitive, Last update: September 03, 2009.

Voice Thread

Check out my Voice Thread:

http://voicethread.com/?#u534086.b1197333.i6460588

Social Learning

One of the most interesting concepts I read about this week in terms of social constructivism is intersubjectivity. "Intersubjectivity is a shared understanding among individuals whose interaction is based on common interests and assumptions that form the ground for their communication" (Rogoff, cited in Kim, 2001). Shared knowledge evolves through articulated thought processes in dialogue. Recently when my students were reading a novel, I had them blog about it together online, and I enjoyed reading their comments as they reasoned their way through some of the more complex questions that I posted for them to answer. I find that I usually have to make adjustments to my own perspective after reading or listening to student ideas, as they adjust theirs.

Recently they finished cooperative podcast projects, based on research. My students are on many different levels, intellectually and socially, but as we were watching the results of their efforts, I was impressed by the amount of information they had been able to assemble and synthesize in a relatively short period of time. For most students, this was their first podcast, so they also had to learn how to write a script from their research, assemble the audio and the pictures, and add a bibliography. Students who were able to build on each other's ideas and to integrate their tasks, assisting each other where necessary, were more successful than students who saw their individual tasks as being a separate part of the project, rather than a piece of the "flow".

Pitler mentions online calendars and next time I assign a project, I want to try one of those, since students can sometimes find time management very challenging.

De.icio.us is a wonderful site, and I have found it indispensable for sharing information and bookmarks. It is very flexible, in that I can keep whatever bookmarks I want private while sharing others. I have recently found out that I can circumvent the Youtube block my district has set up by sharing videos on a blog that I keep just for that purpose. I realize that not everything on YouTube is worthwhile, but there is a lot of valuable content as well.

Kim, B. (2001). Social Constructivism.. In M. Orey (Ed.), 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.

Constructivism in Practice

This week I learned about Learning By Design and Project-Based Learning. These correlate to the principles of constructivist/constructionist learning theories because they require the creation of a learner-centered, inquiry-based environment in which the instructor becomes a facilitator rather than the figure who imparts knowledge. In both cases, tasks are authentic: they stem from real interests on the part of the learner and are designed to be presented to a real world audience of peers or otherwise, not just the teacher/facilitator. Whereas Learning By Design can be a short-term project, Project-Based learning more often is extended over a period of weeks, so there is more emphasis for the learner on time management. In the end, I really did not see a great difference between the two; perhaps since I am more familiar with the term and practice of project-based learning, Learning By Design seems very similar. Both are built on a certain amount of prior knowledge, which needs to be activated through open-ended questioning, and on collaboration among learners and with the facilitator; both these aspects correlate to constructivist/constructionist theory. According to Orey, project-based learning does not necessarily involve the building of an artifact as does learning By Design, where the learner designs an artifact to present to a specific audience, but should be integrated with the curriculum and "be based on standards, to have clearly articulated goals, and to support and demonstrate content learning both in process and product" (Orey, 2001). Also in  Learning By Design, the rich and varied feedback, as well as the reflection that is a part of the strategy allows learners to revise their own thinking and learning, which is an essential part of the process, and one of the principles of constructionist theory.

The videos I saw on the PBL website also involved careful planning on the part of the instructors, which is a major part of the teacher's role in constructionist theory. They were also based on authentic instruction, as they built on the interests and the prior knowledge of the students. In an area such as Language Arts, where much of the assessment is subjective, especially if it is literature based, rubrics which clearly define the expectations and the goals of the project are an essential part of the piece.

Constructionist learning can result in students being  "inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed" because students are motivated by their own interests to engage in inquiry and exploration in the first place,  rather than being simply confined to narrow subject matter in the text or according to the interests of the teacher (George Lucas Educational Foundation, 2008). Thus the real-world application can continue long after students have left the classroom and moved on to adulthood. This thought is reiterated in one of the PBL videos, in which a teacher reflected on the long-range effects of a project that explored gender roles in a middle school.

George Lucas Educational Foundation. (2008) Why teach with project learning?: Providing students with a well-rounded classroom. Edutopia: What Works in Education. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-introduction

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

PBL Online Video Library. retrieved from http://pbl-online.org/video/video.htm

Cognitive Learning Theory and Instructional Strategies

As Dr. Orey explains in the video the connections between language, the senses, and the role of the elaboration process in the development of memories, it becomes very clear to me the reason that advance organizers are such powerful tools for student learning. When I have used video, images, songs, and other media to prepare students for reading a new text, not only are they more open to exploring the text, they are making connections between earlier memories and experiences and the text.

Virtual Field Trips take this concept many steps further by offering students the possibility of experiencing  learning holistically and through making a rich tapestry of connections between experience and subject matter, rather than through merely listening or reading. This accords with the situated learning principles of Lave and Wegner, that "Knowledge needs to be presented in an authentic context" and that "Learning requires social interaction and collaboration." Wikis also follow these principles, since their are many contributors to the learning, who are creating experiences and new knowledge together.

Concept mapping can be used either individually or collaboratively; the technology in programs like C-maps, Inspiration or its online version, Webspiration that permits links, images, sound files and video to become a part of the map, also corresponds to Paivio's dual coding hypothesis explained by Orey as  information being stored as  images and text.

I never knew about the tracked changes and auto-summarizing tools in Microsoft Word, however I am definitely going to provide my students with the opportunity of learning how to summarize information through this tool. I wish I had known about it this year, because it would have helped me to avoid a couple of instances of plagiarization during research projects.

In my student blogs, I have been the one to set up the questions primarily, but I think the idea of students summarizing information and then prompting the discussion with questions would be highly successful, because according to Piaget, students think differently from adults and so the questions they pose would be more relevant to how they are processing the information; although my questions do strike a chord fairly often, I would like to experiment with the response rate that student questions would stimulate.

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


Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

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

Situated learning Overview. Retrieved from http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html on May 19, 2010.

Behaviorist Principles, Students, and Technology

Effort is sometimes a very difficult concept to explain with students, even in the wide range of types of students I teach, because they believe that either that are smart enough to get by with very little effort, or that they are not smart enough, and so effort is useless, because they will not "get it." I found the effort rubric therefore to be very interesting as a positive reinforcer, especially when used with the accompanying graph comparing their effort to their grades, because students who use it are required to face the fact that unless they apply enough effort, they cannot move forward.

One thing that surprised me about the resources shared in the text was the capabilities of Microsoft Word. I found out that along with providing instant feedback on spelling and grammar, a tool that I use frequently and encourage the use of in my classroom, this application actually assigns a grade level to the quality of writing. This capability sets achievement goals for students, and reinforces concepts taught as part of the writing process.  Particularly useful for language arts activities is a site called Mr. Nussbaum: there is a game called Sentence Surgery that is wonderful and engaging for reinforcing proofreading skills that students at the middle school level are still learning. The Flashcard Exchange is an excellent school for reinforcing vocabulary; students can design their own, and thus learning could be reinforced according to different needs. All of these resources are reflective of reinforcement, because they focus in on areas in which students need the most practice; Pitler, et al. remind us that "Mastering a skill or process requires a fair amount of focused practice" (p. 188), and suggest that educational computer games facilitate the extension of learning outside the classroom, and are an attractive way for students to hone their skills. Smith (1999) references Hartley as emphasizing that "Activity is important. Learning is better when the learner is active rather than passive." When students are actively engaged in a pleasurable activity that is reinforcing a skill, they are therefore definitely working towards mastery.

In terms of the behavorist principle of modeling, Google Docs is an excellent resource for peer editing. Posts can be tracked, so there is a record of the assistance students can give to each other in terms of proofreading and editing.  Blogging about specific topics also sets up models for students, as they can read their peers' responses and learn from them.

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.

Smith, M. K. (1999) 'The behaviourist orientation to learning', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/biblio/learning-behavourist.htm, Last update: September 03, 2009.

Developing Skills and Long-Term Classroom Goals

Through the materials presented, the discussions, and the blogs I have visited throughout this course, Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society,  I have first of all been able to gain a much clearer view of the importance of learning, and then teaching, 21st Century  skills. Whereas previously I thought that technology was fun (but perhaps not entirely essential)  my viewpoint has broadened (Laureate Education 2008). I can now relate to the fact that when my students race for the laptops, it is not only because it is entertaining to them, but technology is an authentic part of the way they learn. Due to much of the reading made available to me through this course, and in particular the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, I can appreciate how important it is for educators, and therefore for me in my classroom, to channel the technology skills students have, and their desire to learn more about technology, into constructive research and problem-solving, and into the creation of media products that enhance their learning and that of others. According to Levy and Murnarne (2006) the loss of blue-collar jobs and the rise in the numbers of jobs that require critical thinking skills means that students will need to develop these skills more than ever in order to compete. Not least of the considerations I have about technology is that it is fun, as Thornberg and Davidson pointed out, and since for me a principal motivation for work is the extent to which it engages me and to which I enjoy  it, integrating technology into the classroom means that I will be in this profession for quite a while to come.

Therefore my own skills have undergone a radicalization. I appreciate the importance of blogging when I feel the need to sound out other people, and so now blogging has become a part of my life. Finally, I now know how to publish a podcast online, whereas last year I only knew enough to make the podcast. I can now appreciate the concept of a website as a living entity, or wiki, that many people can create, as opposed to a source of information posted on and controlled entirely by one person. I can direct students who love to create art to enhance their projects to websites where they can create images online. The conservation of paper and trees, one of our vital resources, has long been a major concern of mine; now much of my students' work is accomplished online, through blogging and other posts, and the printer in my classroom sees much less use.

Some things that I still need to learn more about are wiki sties that do not require students to have an email address, but which do require identification such as a login so that I can monitor their posts and contributions, since many of my students are under age 13. Some sites I need to explore more are Knowledge Forum (Kirschner, 2006), and ePals (Trask, 2010).  I would also like to understand more about embedding HTML code so that podcasts and music can be played directly from a site as opposed to being linked to somewhere else.

I believe where I have arrived until now with technology integration and my future goals follow what Cramer describes as the "Three Phases of Technology Use": Print Automation, Expansion of Learning Opportunities, and Data-Driven Virtual learning (Cramer, 2007). In regards to the second phase, one of my future goals is to make research on the Internet easier for my students. Although many of them enjoy technology and use it every day, some have a fear that using technology in school will be boring and the joy of it will be sucked out because they will have to perform "work". Others have a lack of confidence, and their biggest fear is that they will not be adept at tasks that require using technological tools. I have already allayed some of these fears by demonstrating how to make a podcast, and how easy it actually is to do on Garageband; my next step is to show them sites like Clusty, where their topics can be narrowed down and tailored to their needs. So I want ot start off the school year by showing them these tools right away, so that they will gradually become used to them.

Another long term goal is to engage students in creating class wikis as a regular part of the curriculum, beginning from the start of school. Students always have so many questions, and although digression is frowned upon by some district administrators as an inappropriate use of classroom time, I find the opposite is true: the more questions students have that are adequately answered for them, the more they are learning. What better way to have those questions answered than to create a wiki, where students can contribute information, pictures, podcasts, video and so on? One way for me to integrate this in the classroom as a language arts teacher is to create wikis around literature that we are reading. For example, students interested in short stories could create a wiki around both literature under study and around their own stories; the same could be done for poetry, for novels, and for mythology. Since there are many sites that have already been created for the literature we read, students could borrow from those and add their own. This is another area I need to explore further: there is a site named Trackstar where links for research can be stored by teachers, and although I would not necessarily want to limit students to sites I have chosen for them, I think it is important for the younger and less experienced ones to have a basis to start from.  In any case, they will be reading and writing. Along with creating wikis, I would like to use ePals, a link provided by our instructor, Judy Trask, to communicate and share with students in other parts of the world. Beyond that, I believe that student wikis should be a forum where students can engage in discussing and problem-solving for issues that concern them, and since some of the questions asked by my students concern these very issues, I would start with their questions. 

While I am excited about these goals, I also know they will require careful planning and well-structured class management. Providing students with tools for self-management is one solution that I have found useful for many of them. A log of their activities and a checklist of goals and deadlines to meet them helps them to focus on their tasks, and to accomplish what they need to do within a reasonable time framework. Also, since there are students who are ready to start on project-based learning without any further encouragement, I plan to have these students model for the others how fun and exciting it can be, and what wonderful results it can have for them and for their learning. In this way, my class will become even less teacher-centered, and more focused on what the students can accomplish with just steady guidance, a little advice, some directed risk-taking, and a lot of passion for breaking into new territory.

References:

Cramer, S. (2007). Update your classroom with learning objects and twenty-first century skills. Clearing House, 80(3), 126–132.

Kirschner, P., & Erkens, G. (2006). Cognitive tools and mindtools for collaborative learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 35(2), 199–209.

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century learning: Answers to educators' questions. New Directions for Youth Development, 2006(110), 53–62.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/downloads/P21_Report.pdf 

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Program number 2. Transforming the classroom with technology,  Part 1. [Motion Picture]. The emergence of educational technology. Baltimore.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2008). Program number 23. Bringing the fun into teaching with technology. [Motion Picture]. The emergence of educational technology. Baltimore.