Fruita 8/9 Tech Talk

During this course, I have felt that I was learning some great things.  I have been feeling like, wow; this is something I can take and use right now.  Throughout this course, I have been building confidence and now I am ready to put what I have learned into practice.  In my last application, I put together a lesson plan, a report, and a proposal.  The lesson is centered on online gaming and simulations.  This new technology is one that I feel is essential and I want to include it into each of my classes.  This is an example of me taking what I have learned and putting it into practice.  The report that I wrote is to members of my school and possibly my school district.  In this report, I am selling digital gaming and simulations to them and showing the benefits.  The final part of my application is a grant proposal.  In this proposal, I state what technology I am using and will need funding for.  I also go into detail describing why I need it and what my classroom would look like without it.  Through writing the proposal and the report, I feel that it is evident that I am taking steps to become a leader at my school and district with new and emerging technologies. 

There are a few things that I will be doing to identify new and emerging technologies.  The first thing that I will be doing is reading the Horizon Report.  This was an extremely beneficial resource.  In this report, I learned about new and emerging technologies that are in the now and in the near future.  I think one other great resource is people.  I have meet some great resources during this class along with members of my school and district PLC’s.  Being the head of my schools technology committee, I feel I can push the adoption process of new technologies easily.  Each member in this committee is there because they love teaching and they are in tune with new technologies that they are using in their classrooms.  As a group, we will put together information and presentations that show the benefits of the technologies we want to adopt.  When focusing on incorporating technology to support 21^st century skills, I feel that communication and research skills seem to two of the most important.  This coming year, I am planning a unit with a teacher from another school in my district.  In this unit we will construct a Ning and have our classes work collaboratively to do research on a real world problem.  They will offer solutions to the problem on the Ning.  I believe this unit will address many 21^st century skills, especially communication and online research skills.

This class has been one of my favorite and beneficial classes that I have taken in this program.  I feel that I have learned things that I can use right now.  My confidence has grown and I am in the process of infusing new skills and technologies into my lessons for this coming school year. 

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During this class, there has been a lot of information that I have learned and that I am taking with me to put in my teaching toolbox.  I have always been familiar with differentiated instruction (DI), but universal design for learning (UDL) was new for me.  One of the web sites that I have really enjoyed and plan to use immediately in my class is ning.com.  Through this differentiation station social network, I have shared ideas, thoughts, projects, and had discussions with my classmates.  This wonderful resource promotes communication and group work.  Using technologies such as Ning, I now can further infuse technology into my classroom and instruction.  This is a great way to differentiate for all students.  Dr. Tomlinson says that teachers can differentiate content, process, product, affect, and learning environment (Laureate, 2009).  I feel that using Ning in my classroom will allow me to do these six things.  In my group’s ning, we have shared resources such as assessments that students will take to show us their learning profiles.  We have also shared informative presentations that we will be presenting to our staff about what UDL is and what it looks like in the classroom.

As I move forward through the summer and look into next fall, there are some changes that I am planning to make in my instruction.  The first change will be a pre-assessment.  During this class, I have created a self-assessment for my students.  The questions on the assessment are directed to inform me what each students learning style is.  Having this information, I will have a better understanding of what types of learners I have and then I can design my lessons around their strengths.  The second change that I am incorporating into my lessons is UDL.  I have really enjoyed learning about the principals of UDL and I agree with them.  Currently, I teach in a computer lab so I do mostly project based learning.  Along with this and the constructivist learning theory, I will now be implementing UDL and allowing students to choose their own pathways to meeting the unit goals and standards.  I am excited to try this method and I know that my students are going to love this.  One thing that I found comfort in as I began this journey was something that Dr. Smith said in one of our DVD’s; she said to address my fears and have no reluctance.  This should be a trial and error experience, which is how I will know how it will work for my students and me (Laureate, 2009).  Therefore, as I move onward and upward, I will keep these thoughts in my mind.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer).  (2009). Introduction to Differentiated Instruction.  Baltimore: Author

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer).  (2009). Putting it all Together.  Baltimore: Author

The last couple of weeks I have been researching in depth about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Differentiated Instruction DI.  I have been working on infusing new and exciting technologies into my instruction and lessons for students.  UDL and DI are a way of teaching that helps accommodate students so they have a better chance for success.  During these past few weeks I have picked up a few new resources, some I have dabbled in and some I have not.  Next year I am planning on incorporating more Voice Thread and Glogster, as well as trying to get funding to purchase a class set of clickers.  I feel that these three technologies are a great way to meet the needs of audio, visual, and kinesthetic learners.  I like to offer choices to students so no one student feels like they may not be successful based on their skills and interests.  I am excited to take some of this new knowledge and try it out in my classroom.

This week in my masters class, we were instructed to visit http://udlselfcheck.cast.org/learn.php.  We took an assessment to find out how well we integrate UDL into our goals, methods, materials, and assessments.  On a one to five scale, I went through and answered questions about my teaching and my students.  At the end of each segment, there was a summary button that put my self-assessment scores on a bar graph.  Overall, I felt that I averaged about a 3.75 out of 5.  All four of the categories I rated myself pretty close.  I did feel that I was a little higher in my materials and goals area, and a little lower in methods and assessment.

Two areas that I have decided to work on are visual progress markers, and external rewards.  I feel by addressing these two areas first, I will get my students motivated to take control of their learning.   I have always been a believer in intrinsic rewards, and I still am, but I want to do a little more extrinsic rewards to see how my students react.  One other thing I would love to have in my classroom is a talk-to-text translator.  I think it would be beneficial to have this type of technology to help meet the needs of my students.

These past two weeks in my masters class we have been focusing on different methods of assessments as well as involving technology. This week my group has been assigned to create a social network. We have decided to create a Ning.  I personally am not a Myspace or Facebook user for reasons of my own, so I wanted to choose a different method. When we got started, I could see the benefits this web site could have with my students. 

 Three weeks ago at one of my distritc wide PLC’s, we discussed doing a collaborative project between classes from differnt schools. We were trying to determine the best method to communicate while still being able to use district aproved web sites.  With the use of Ning, I believe we will be able to communicate with another class and work together to create a project that meets our curriculum.

The last resource that I happened to stumble upon yesterday from a web 2.0 site was Titanpad.  I have not had the chance to play around on it too much yet but it looks extremely useful.  With this program, student can all work on the same document at the same time.  Each student has a color and it shows who is adding what data or information.  I am looking forward to experimenting with this more in the future. Does anybody have any other collaborative ideas that I could use?

As I look back over the past several weeks, I have found there is a new way to set goals and achieve them. Previously, I would set goals and often times forget about them, or not review them for an extended period of time. By following the GAME Plan model, I became focused not only on the outcome, but the actions I needed to take to get there. I continuously monitored my actions and made sure they were in line with my goals. At the end, I evaluated to see if I had met my goals. My final evaluation is that I need more time to fully master these goals, but I have taken good strides toward doing so. My two goals were taken from the NETS website and are from the ISTE standards. My goals are evaluating and reflecting to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools, and individualizing learning activities to address students’ different learning styles using digital tools and resources. My main courses of action were gathering information from my University of Walden classmates as well as teachers from my school district and school. I feel that I have learned valuable information that will help me transform the way I teach and the way my students will learn. I am already using more digital tools and emerging technologies in my class and both my students and I have enjoyed the benefits from this. I have also learned new skills from fellow teachers and my Walden education, about differentiating instruction and meeting the learning needs of my students. My evaluation of this process and goals lead me to one conclusion, I need more time. Time seems to be the only resource that I do not have enough of.

Some of the immediate adjustments that I am making right now are becoming more familiar with new and emerging technologies. Since my time at Walden, I have incorporated a class blog with my 9^th grade business class, and a podcast and wiki in my media productions class. Currently, I am meeting with two other 8^th grade computer teachers from my district. Together we are working on building an online collaborative learning environment. We plan to incorporate Wiki’s, Ning’s, or Edmodo’s with project based learning. In these lessons, we will be pairing students from different schools. This is a work in progress that we will have completed this summer and will be ready to implement next fall. This class has truly been fun and enlightening and I am excited about the way it has transformed my teaching.

There are many different ways to incorporate the GAME Plan model into my lessons. I feel that this is a good skill to teach students and teachers alike. One idea that I have come up with is to have students pick one indicator from each of the six ISTE standards to improve upon. The standards are creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking/problem solving/decision making, digital citizenship, and technology concepts and operations. By selecting one indicator from each of these six categories, students would be striving to become proficient in all areas of the standards. As a teacher, it would be my duty to give them the opportunity to set actions to fulfill their goals. My lessons and units would have to be built around these standards to a point where students with different goals can still achieve them through the assignment. I would have students keep some sort of journal, probably on class blog, that they could reflect and monitor their process. This is what I am doing with my blog right now and I feel that it is beneficial to the process.

Another idea that I have it to let students pick one standard to focus on, but they would be setting goals to become proficient in all indicators in that standard. I would have to design lessons and units that allow students who picked different standards to be successful no matter what they choose for their goal. As I mentioned before, I would have students keep a journal about them monitoring and evaluating their goals and actions on a class blog. One big plus for me is that my school district is adopting the ISTE standards for middle school technology teachers. This is nice because all of my content is already centered on these standards. However, this is not the case for my 9^th grade business class. I will have to do some tweaking of lessons and units but I feel that I can successfully meet both sets of standards and my students can be successful in their GAME Plans.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30864080@N00/3663411038

As I reflect on the goals that I set for myself, evaluating and reflecting to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools, and individualizing learning activities to address students’ different learning styles using digital tools and resources, I feel that I am making progress. Since I made my GAME Plan, I find myself reflecting even more than I have in the past. I am looking at lessons that I taught before and how I can alter them by adding new digital tools. This semester I have incorporated a class blog with my 9^th grade business class. We use the blog as a threaded discussion that deals with our class curriculum such as the economy. I have also learned that technology is an easier way to differentiate for my students. There are so many more choices, possibilities and differ routes for my students to get to the same place. I feel like I will always need to improve my teaching. The biggest area for me will be differentiating because students that come into my class are so different.

I do not think that I am going to set new learning goals until I am more comfortable with infusing new technologies into my lessons and instruction. This is an area that I feel I will make a priority when I finish my masters program and I have a little more time. I am excited about the possibilities that I am learning about. Right now I am learning about online learning and collaboration. Vicki Davis has shown some amazing things that she is doing with her students and I would like to get closer to that point before I set new goals. One thing that I want to do at the beginning of next year is do an online project with another school in my district. I know the computer teacher at that school and I want to create a project over the summer with him that we can team teach with our 8^thgrade classes. I would like to set up a wiki for the two of us. This will be like our online classroom with assignments, rubrics, and student work. Earlier this year, we talked about doing a unit with our webcams but it did not materialize, maybe this can be another form of communication that we can use. What do you guys think about the project? Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks for your input.

As I evaluate my actions towards meeting the goals I made for myself in my GAME Plan, I see that I am taking some strides. As I mentioned in my previous post, time is my biggest enemy right now. Currently I am coaching a sport, working on my masters, and proctoring my state mandated standardized testing, not to mention teaching every day. However, the steps that I have taken have been beneficial so far. I will be meeting with my PLC later this week and we will be talking about implementing new technology. We do this once a month. This will help me to infuse digital tools and resources into my instruction and student work. As soon as things slow down at my school, I will be meeting with a colleague who is specialized in literacy and differentiating instruction. She mentioned reading a Marzano book that she is going to loan me about instruction.

The bulk of my learning so far has come from my masters program. I am learning about integrating technology into my instruction as well as my lessons. I am also learning how to use technology to assess students. I am currently doing a project with my students and I am going to let them choose what type of product they want to use to meet the criteria. They can choose from making a movie, a podcast, a power point, or a publication. The area that I am still working on is differentiating. I feel that letting students make choices when creating projects is a start, but there is always more that I can do.  The adjustment that I feel I need to make for my plan to be successful is to schedule more time in the evenings to sift through my resources. This is challenging because the evenings are the only family time I have with my wife and 2 year old daughter who just started potty training. Wow I am busy right now!