6713 Final Course Reflection: Integrating Technology Across Content Areas

As I complete this class, Integrating Technology Across Content Areas, I am reflecting on what I have learned and the immediate applications that learning will have on my classroom.  Through the use of the GAME Plan template, I have focused my lessons around setting goals, taking action, monitoring my lesson and the students’ learning, and evaluating and extending my lesson (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). I have sectioned my learning into two main categories:  using the GAME Plan and integrating technology across content areas.

The template of the GAME Plan allowed me to neatly focus my teaching and reminded me of the essentials of a good lesson that integrates technology into my classroom.  I chose to focus on two main areas of the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Standards: engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources and design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity (ISTE, 2008).  What I would like to do to further my education and develop my teaching is to incorporate different standards and continue to try new strategies to relate to my learners.  As I completed my GAME Plan lessons, I realized that although using new technologies captured student interest, using ones that were more familiar to them eases frustration.  Guhlin(2007) cited several older technologies that still met our requirement for incorporating digital storytelling, but I will continue to look for new ones. While PowerPoint and Google Presentation were two platforms they were familiar with, VoiceThread was not, and students with less confidence in trying new modes were more comfortable with what they knew.  In the future, I will continue to monitor my lessons carefully as I balance pushing new technology with making sure the objective can be met and not overwhelm my students. One of my favorites from this class is the digital story telling.  In my opinion, it blends the ideas of social networking such as Vine and Instagram nicely without putting me as a teacher in a difficult position with social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook that my students do not have access to at school. I find the comic strip format an outstanding way to summarize using not only photos but words. 

Even though our text was divided among the various content areas when it came to giving specific suggestions for the implementation of the GAME Plan, with the use of Problem Based Learning (PBL), I realize more than ever the ease and importance of integrating more than one content area into as many lessons as possible.  I would even add a category into the GAME Plan template to document the various content areas that the lesson covers.  Showing students the connectivity and relevance of what one class does in relation to others and more global issues is important to me, and in the future I would like to do more of that.  It fits into the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IB MYP) format our school is adopting and is very timely and pertinent to the diverse student population at my school. 

Integrating Technology Across Content Areas has added one more piece to my teaching repertoire as I have studied the GAME Plan template and learned new ways to integrate technology into my classroom that connects students, content material, and global learning.  While my students and I have honed some of our skills with tools we have used before, we have also tried new technologies.  Some lessons were met with greater success than others, but monitoring what worked and what needs improvement will not be difficult and analyzing the results will allow me to set new goals.

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom

       use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Guhlin, M. (2007). Web-based tools for creating digital stories and more. TechEdge, 27(1), 26–

            28. 

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved fromhttp://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

The Hunger GAME: Time to Change Strategy?

To review my GAME plan, my goal is to incorporate one new activity and one new assessment for my students as they continue mastering the standards for The Hunger Games unit we are covering.  These goals will allow me to develop  my implementation of ISTE indicators that will customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources; and 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 (ISTE, 2008). My activity is to give students the task of finding a song that relates to one of the characters from the novel and creating a video, slideshow, or podcast that shows the lyrics and what they have to do with characterization.  My assessment is to challenge students to create a series of three six second video clips that highlight the novel’s significant plot events, use of symbolism, and characterization.

Life just got in the way.  Instead of being in the classroom where we could use laptops to finalize their group projects where they are creating an arena, I just lost a day due to testing that was added unexpectedly so we can collect data on my students’ reading levels.  Another factor that has them excited (read distracted) is the upcoming release this Friday of Catching Fire.  They are so anxious to see what happens next that they are making predictions instead of focusing on our content.  I am curious to see how the new movie sparks their interest and catches fire (pun intended) in the classroom when it comes to creating their vines. Add into that the upcoming Thanksgiving break, and six seconds of attention is about all I may get. 

The good news:  they are excited about their arenas and are impressed with using Google Docs.  Some of them are working on shared documents for the first time.  If I can model some Vines that I make this weekend, I think that I can reignite their interest in new technologies and get them to complete the projects if not before the break, then during their time off.

I will stick with my plan and use my resources.  My colleagues can help me make the Vine samples since we all dressed up as Hunger Games characters for Halloween (we had an amazing Effie, Madge, and Katniss – I was Greasy Sae).  Right now I am monitoring my progress and will make adjustments in the deadlines as needed to accommodate student motivation and practicality;  I will later evaluate my choice of technologies I have included (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010).  Their focus in on their current project and not the new challenges I have posed, so I am curious to see how this all plays out.  Back to the field!  Half time is over and it is time for the fourth quarter press!  Whatever the outcome, students are talking about the book, and that is a “win.”

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom

       use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for

            teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved fromhttp://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

Week 2 of the GAME Plan

       Last week I set my goal: create one project and one assessment that allow students to use a different technology than we have used in class to reflect diverse learning styles, allow for collaboration, and utilize students’ creativity as they plan their project and self-assess upon completion. Moving into action, I spoke with my English 10 team and we came up with some ideas for fun projects and assessments that will coincide with the standards we are covering for our Hunger Games unit. We kept in mind our essential questions, looked at the ways students could learn it, and came up with ideas as to how students could access the information differently (Howard, 2004).
       Right now, my students are working collaboratively to create the next arena where the Games could be held. They are focusing on setting, elements that would make the games strategic, symbolism used within the arena like logos, icons, and signals, the influence of another time period, and the characters that would be competing. In between reading the book, watching supporting video clips, and working as a team on this project, students are also completing some supplemental activities. One was to look at song lyrics and compare Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Alicia Keys “Girl on Fire” to our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
      The activity and challenge I have given my students is to find another song that relates to any character from the novel and create either a podcast, a video, or a slideshow that uses the music, the lyrics, and an explanation of the connections made between the song and a character. For the assessment activity, I have created a project using the idea of the social media platform Vine: students are to create a series of three Vine videos, or six second videos using their smart phones, that highlight a significant event of the novel, a symbol from the novel, and a character’s personality and relationship to others from the novel.
      Materials I will need are laptops and student smart phones or other video recording devices. The students may upload videos to our class wiki and may present their projects using our Smart Board. I still need to create the specific assignment sheets and rubrics for the activity and assessment, and making my own exemplar to model ideas will be very helpful for students (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010, p. 101). I will continue to collaborate with my team to complete that step. Incorporating universal design for learning (UDL), I will hopefully find ways of sharing information that students are not able to use in a more traditional classroom or assignment and provide flexibility in terms of options for materials, methods, and assessments (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010, p. 117).
        As I continue to monitor my progress, I will finalize the assignment sheet and the rubric this weekend. I have already reserved laptops for the week before Thanksgiving break, and will monitor student progress to decide if they will be needed after break as well. Anticipating student absences, I think this may be necessary. I am anxious to see what the students think about their new “test”!

 References 

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A     standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Howard, K. L. (2004). Universal design for learning: Meeting the needs of all students. Learning and 
     Leading with Technology, 31(5), 26–29.

An Interesting Perspective on Common Core and High Stakes Testing

The GAME Plan for The Hunger Games

     The International Society for Technology Education’s (ISTE) standards for teachers are clearly stated, timely, flexible, and reflective of solid 21st century teaching practices.  The National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T) include the following:

1.      Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

2.      Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

3.      Model Digital Age Work and Learning

4.      Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

5.      Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

Of these standards (ISTE, 2008), I feel the areas I could develop further would be standards 1 and 2.

            Connecting to and engaging students is one of the most important jobs I do after knowing my content well.  A brilliant mind may contain extensive content information, but if that instructor cannot communicate it in a relevant way to students, it does not hold the same value.  There are two indicators that I would like to focus on in regard to standard 2: customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources; and 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. To complement that standard, I would also like to focus on standard 1 and one of its indicators: promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.

            To develop my proficiency in these standards, I will create a GAME plan that allows me to set goals, take action, monitor my progress, and evaluate and extend my actions (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010).  My goal is to create one project and one assessment that allow students to use a different technology than we have used in class to reflect diverse learning styles, allow for collaboration, and utilize students’ creativity as they plan their project and self-assess upon completion.  I will take action by looking at my standards and essential questions for my Hunger Games unit and create an activity that encompasses my goal. I will ask my English 10 team for ideas and collaborate with them.  I will monitor my progress by completing the assignments creation by Thanksgiving break, providing a rubric for my students, and sharing the final assignments with my team.  I will evaluate my actions by observing the students’ participation in the activity and assessment and have them evaluate the activity and assessment as part of their final reflections and self-assessments.

            By following a GAME plan, I hope to make the lights go on for my Hunger Games participants;  I want them to be able to use their choice of technology at school, creatively express the content knowledge they have, learn the way they want to, and connect students to their world (Prensky, 2008, p. 45).  By strengthening my proficiencies in the ISTE standards, not only do I become a better teacher, buy my students become better 21st century learners.

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom

       use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for

            teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved fromhttp://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

Prensky, M. (2008). Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 40–45.

Reflecting on Bridges I Have Built

​As my current course Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology comes to a close, I look back to what I have learned and how that has changed me as a teacher.  For our first assignment and my initial blog post for this class, I stated that I am an amalgam of many things in life, including my personal theories of how students learn.  If find this to still be true, by I know I have added even more to the mix.  While I still rely on behaviorism to establish classroom management policy, I realize that the standards of Partnership for 21st Century Skills(P21) of critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation (P21, 2013, para. 1) encourage me to include more constructivism in my classroom where students individually construct his/her own meaning, constructionism when students build an external artifact to share with others (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011d), and social constructivism where students build knowledge with other people (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011a).  What the students build their knowledge upon all depends on the theory of cognitivism when student build on prior knowledge, connecting ideas to other ideas (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011c).  As a strong believer in multiple intelligences, I was strongly influenced by my new learning of Paivio’s dual coding hypothesis and how we remember images better than text, and when additional senses can be added, an even stronger connection forms (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011c).  

​This course has prompted me to make several changes to my teaching.  The first is to increase the use of images and graphics.  I think that theoretically this is good practice as research shows that students can achieve a 27% increase in achievement with its use (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011b).  In a technology-rich world where students are exposed to forms of visual entertainment and communication, the use of graphics and images is engaging.  Those images will allow for dual coding and will help students to “reflect on and recall knowledge” (Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn, 2012, p. 86). The second change I will make is to do more with identifying similarities and differences, a strategy that could improve student achievement 45% (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011b).  Using graphics and graphic organizers to represent the similarities and differences is a way to tie the two strategies together.

​While in previous courses I have applied the use of wikis and a blog to my classroom and students found success in each of those, I am looking forward to using two new technologies in class next year:  Voice Thread and concept mapping.  My high school students and my own teenage children are enamored with Instagram, memes, and YouTube.  I like how Voice Thread allows for the graphics to become a part of communication, many of them which could be similar to Power Point slides and therefore not far from most teachers’ comfort zones, but also allows for texting, video, or audio clips to be an interactive part of a Voice Thread conversation.  I am anxious to see how my students respond to this.  The other tool, concept mapping, reminds me of the ideas of Backward Design.  I have always used a road trip as an analogy for my classroom, and this is a way to incorporate a map to each unit to show students where we are headed, what they know, and allow them to add their knowledge as they gain it to a map.  Both Voice Thread and concept mapping were new strategies to me.

​Even though I am surrounded by teenagers, I still have many students who are not comfortable with using technology as a learning tool.  As expert as they are in social networking, they do not have confidence when it comes to trying new technologies.  One long-term goal I have is to try to always have something new for students to try, to always push them to use critical thinking skills to try something new and figure out the unknown.  Another long-term goal I have is to have technology as learning tools, not just instructional tools, part of every unit if not every lesson.  We are limited in our access to technology at my school, so using the students’ smart phones would be the easiest way to achieve this goal. Voice Thread has an app for phones, as does Google Drive.  I will continue investigating other concept mapping options.  In order to achieve these goals, I will first be an active part on my school’s technology team, vying for resources and creating plans for teachers to implement so that more students are seeing greater technology use in the classroom.  I will also use my lesson plan template and create a new category for tech integration in order to have accountability for my usage.  My goals are to use Voice Thread and concept mapping tools within the first quarter of school.  During the second quarter, I will make sure all students are sharing documents on Google Apps.  By third quarter, I will have student blogs more prolific in my classroom in order to make my lessons more student-centered, and by fourth quarter, I would like to implement a flipped classroom to help with the standardized testing schedule that interferes with instruction.  

​This course has allowed me to better organize my classroom around how students learn and using technology that supports those learning strategies and theories.  I can now better incorporate technology as learning tools instead of just instructional tools, and I know that graphics and nonlinguistic representation is a solid way to complement the writing and reading that goes on in my English classroom that is full of diverse learners.  I am a better teacher because of the last eight weeks, and my students and I will benefit from my new knowledge.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011a). Program eight: Social learning theories [Video

webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from

http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecol

lege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011b). Program eleven: Instructional strategies, Part one

[Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from

http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecol

lege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011c). Program five: Cognitive learning theory [Video

webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from

http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecol

lege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011d). Program seven: Constructionist and constructivist

​learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology.

Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=

5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984

650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

"The Partnership for 21st Century Skills." The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. P21, 2011.​Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that​works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Looking at Strategies and Effects of School Attendance

I was not able to embed a YouTube video in my VoiceThread, but I thought this was another good conversation point discussing one school's incentive program to improve student attendance but also the ramifications on school budgets if students do not attend school.