Seamlessly integrating technology into my instructions is a very important goal. Its importance is magnified as I read articles like Friedman’s “It’s A Flat World, After All” and Prensky’s “Turning on the Lights.” Both authors make clear the need to re-evaluate how and what students are learning in today’s classrooms. I have been using Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer’s (2010) GAME Plan approach to build my proficiency with technology integration. You may recall that this approach involves setting goals, taking action, monitoring progress, and evaluating success and extending learning (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). The goals I created were established to build my proficiency in the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•T). This week, I would like to consider the steps I have taken towards meeting my goals.
The first goal I developed was to implement a class blog to communicate with students and parents and have students utilize blogs for collaborative reflection. I have discovered that I need to modify this goal. The IT department at my school has informed me that they will be setting up blogging sites for each teacher within our school’s server. They prefer for blogging to be handled this way so that students do not need individual email accounts and teachers can closely monitor the discussions. Therefore, I have decided to focus on the first part of that goal to implement a class blog so that I can communicate with students and parents. This will allow me to keep students who miss class informed. They will also be able to post questions to me about the material. I appreciate the advice from people on my last posting. This really answered a lot of questions for me. Focusing on creating a blog for the class as a whole is a good step to begin with so that I can work towards having my students use their own blogs. I think that I will summarize what was done in class. Do any of you have suggestions for what I need to include on this blog?
The second goal I have is to use flip video to record myself teaching and compile the clips for my professional portfolio. I have made a lot of progress in this area. I have recorded clips from one lesson and my next step is to edit them into a video. I need to have the IT department load the flip software onto my laptop. In the mean time, I will have to do my editing on my home computer. I would highly recommend the flip videos to other teachers. I have found them to be very user friendly and the quality is quite good considering how affordable they are. I may need to modify my plan to include how many lessons I would like to record. I think that one to two a month is a good goal to have as I do not want to become overwhelmed with the task. This would give me a good base of information to review as I evaluate the things I am asking my students to do. I am really interested in having my students use these cameras in the future. Have any of you had students do projects with them? Do you have any advice?
Thanks to everyone who has assisted me with my goals. I really appreciate the helpful advice I have received. I will continue to keep you posted as I work to build my proficiency in these areas and I look forward to hearing more great suggestions.
Jenny
Resources
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Prensky, M. (2008, March). Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 40-45.
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Hi Jenny,
ReplyDeleteYour information on blogs were very interesting. I just decided to add a blog on my class website, but I have not talked to the IT department yet. Although, I wondered what would happen with student email accounts being needed to sign on. Please keep your readers informed on exactly how that works with in your system. The school that I teach at has so many filters on the server that it makes it hard to impossible for students to connect to their personal email accounts at school. I guess it's just another hurdle to get over as we strive to improve the face of education.
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteIn my district, student and teacher blogs are provided as part of the student e-mail system from www.gaggle.net. It is nice because the blogs can be filtered for appropriate language and pictures but the filters are controlled at the school level. In addition to e-mail and blogs, there is also a chat function with gaggle.
Because my district does not have an extranet, some teachers are using the blogs to share information with parents. Here are some examples of middle school teaching teams using blogs at one of the schools in my district to share homework information:
www.gaggle.net/blog/mmsteam6
www.gaggle.net/blog/Team7
www.gaggle.net/blog/mmsteam8
While they are not very fancy, parents seem to really like having access to homework assignments and the ability to download associated attachment. It has greatly reduced the amount of e-mail traffic for teachers and parents and since it is done as a team, the parents can get the bulk of their child’s homework at one location.
In terms of flip cameras, I had a middle school science teacher who uses several extensively in her class. Unfortunately, our IT department will not currently install the drivers/software for the camera so she has to use her own laptop for editing purposes. The quality of the video is very good and it is handy to quickly pull out and capture learning moments. Eventually when we get our extranets, I would like to see teachers and students capture short clips of class activities and post them for parents. This might even be possible now with the blogs but because of our current moratorium on new software, the flip cameras cannot be utilized with school computers. It is another hurdle to navigate.
Kevin
Bonnie,
ReplyDeleteFilters can be a difficult challenge to deal with. One of the reasons I haven't had the students set up their own blogs is because many require the use of an email account and our school does not provide those to students. As you mentioned, personal accounts are not easily accessible. Actually in my school's internet use policy it is not allowed for students to use personal email. I have decided to use a website for my goal of student and parent collaboration. I would love to see your site if you could direct me to it. I am looking for ideas of how I want to set my site up. I think that a website would work better for as I will be able to manage the various courses I teach from one site rather than setting up a blog for each. I would really like to have my students blogging in the future.
Thanks for your input.
Jenny
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your valuable input. I visited the gaggle sites you mentioned. The kind of information that your teachers are posting there is similiar to what I would like to do. Currently I am leaning towards setting up a website rather than a blog for this. I feel like a website would allow me to easily manage the assignments for all of my courses. One of the sites would allow me to password protect pages if needed. This is a nice feature for me as it is required by my IED course not to post any curriculum to the internet unless password protected. This would cost some money but I may be interested in doing it in the future.
It must be very frutstrating to have the flip cameras and not be able to utilize them fully. Posting clips to blogs or webpages is a great idea. This would really allow teachers to be transparent with the work they are doing in the classroom.
Jenny