Using the Game Plan with Students

During the last several weeks, I have been developing my proficiency with the ISTE’s National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS –T). Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer’s (2010) Game Plan is an approach that worked well for me as I developed skills related to the creation of a website and use of flip video. This process allowed me to set personal goals related to technology, take action to achieve those goals, monitor my progress, and evaluate my progress and effectiveness with the technology. The Game Plan approach worked well because I was able to customize it to my own goals. It allowed me to make adjustments and take action as needed. The Game Plan process is one that may work well with my students.

The ISTE also has a set of National Education Standards for Students (NET-S). As I read through these standards, it quickly became clear that the NETS-T and NETS-S are inter-related. It appears as though the NETS-T were designed so that they would support the NETS-S. A teacher fluent with the NETS-T would also be enhancing skills related to the standards for students. I am working to build my fluency with the standards described in the NETS-T. The efforts I have made are setting me on a path to further develop or enhance the technology standards in my students. These activities have increased my awareness about the technology standards that both teachers and students should have.

The Game Plan is a process that I plan to teach my students. It will be introduced at the beginning of a new project and then used as we progress throughout the semester. I will provide my students with guidance throughout the process. Students will need to identify the aspects of the project and set goals that will allow them to be successful. Many of these goals will relate to the technology they are using for the project. I will help students in taking action, monitoring, and evaluating their plan. The more experienced students become with this process the less direct support they will need from me. Recording my thoughts about this process has been helpful in reflecting on what I have learned. Reflection is an important step in becoming a self directed learner. Therefore, my students will record their thoughts throughout the Game Plan process by keeping a journal or posting to a blog. Incorporating the Game Plan process can promote self directed learning in my students while seamlessly integrating technology.

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

Revising My Game Plan: Class Website & Flip Video

Those of you following my blog will recall that I have been working on building my proficiency in two areas of the NETS-T. The initial goals I set were established in my blog post titled “GAME Plan.” The GAME Plan is an approach designed by Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2010) to promote self directed learning. This method has worked well for me as I develop proficiency related to my goals of: using Flip Video to record myself teaching for my professional portfolio and in the creation of a website to improve communication and collaboration among teachers, students, and parents.

I have spent quite a bit of time over the last several weeks working to accomplish these goals. The most important thing that I have learned is that developing my proficiency with technology is not something that can ever fully be achieved. This is due primarily to the rapid speed that technology changes or new technologies are introduced. I need to embrace technology and the fact that I will need to continue professional development with it if I am to provide the best education that I can to my students. The efforts that I have made in regards to my Game plan are a good indicator that I am up to the challenge.

The development of my website “Mrs. Nabb’s Classes” is off to a good start. I have the schedule of activities for the next week or so updated for each class. I actually had a parent request help with keeping track of their son’s progress. I was able to direct them to this site so that they can visit with the child about what assignments would be due. Creating helpful links for students to visit from my site is one goal that I am still working towards. I have had quite a bit of success also in using flip video. The greatest challenge that I have to overcome is finding the time to edit my clips. I will continue to record myself teaching because it does help me to identify areas that I could improve. I discovered that I do not provide enough wait time when asking students questions during class so that is something I am working on. A goal that I have in regards to Flip video is to capture myself teaching a variety of lessons. This goal will really allow me to see what class is like for my students so that I can identify areas to improve both in my teaching and in the lessons I create.

There are several learning goals that I would like to set for myself based on the NETS-T. Promoting student reflection using collaborative tools, standard 1c, is an area that I would like to further develop. I would accomplish this goal by developing a blog and creating guiding questions for my students to answer. I am also excited to get the flip videos into the hands of my students. Developing learning experiences that allow students to create videos would help build my proficiency in several of the areas of standard 2. Students are capable of amazing things when provided the opportunity. Enhancing my skills in regards to the NETS-T will encourage me to create more of these opportunities.

The GAME plan approach worked well for me as I developed my proficiency in these areas. When it comes to technology, I have found that I learn best by trying it out. I am often intimidated by a new technology when I first begin to use it. Gaining experience and confidence with the tool is essential for me if I am to incorporate it into my class. It is very helpful for me to have someone help me through a process one on one. However, this is not always practical due to the situation. Having a more knowledgeable person to go for assistance is very valuable to me.

Jenny

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

The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•T). (n.d.). International Society for Technology in Education Home. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

Evaluating My Progress with Flip Video and a Class Website

One of my goals as a teacher is to enhance my students’ ability to become self directed learners. A self directed learner can be described as someone who investigates a topic of interest or works towards learning a new skill (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). It is essential for teachers to model the skills of self-directed learning if they are to enhance those skills in their students. I have identified two areas of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•T) to build my proficiency in. Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer’s (2010) GAME Plan approach has been working well for me as I work towards these goals. So far I have established my goals and begun to take action. This week, I would like to evaluate my progress towards meeting my goals.

My first goal was originally to develop a blog in order to collaborate with students, peers, parents and community members. After considering the advice from other teachers and researching related information, I have decided that a website may work better for this purposed as opposed to a blog. Doing a simple Google search for “class websites” lead me to an abundance of programs that I could use. Weebly is the resource I chose to use for my site creation. From this site I can create pages for each of my classes. This approach appears as though it will work better for me as I felt that creating a blog for each of my classes would be more than I could easily manage. My site is called Mrs. Nabb’s Classes. I have written a short introduction and created pages for each of the courses I teach this semester. The IED page has the week activities listed and I plan on updating the other courses as well. One of the features that I liked about Weebly is that it will allow me to password protect some of the pages if I choose to purchase the pro version. This is an important option for me because one of my courses requires material on the internet to be password protected. At this point I am simply listing the activities we are doing so I do not have the need for it yet.

My second goal is to utilize the flip video to record clips of myself teaching to compile for my professional portfolio. I am currently in the process of editing the clips I have to create a short movie of one of my lessons. I am planning on sharing this video with my teacher quality committee. The Mimio board is used in this lesson and several of the teachers in my group would like help in how they can use it in their classroom. The editing has to be done on my home computer as the software is not yet loaded on my school laptop. I would be able to progress with this faster if I was able to do the editing at school without the many distractions I have at home.

The actions I have taken have been very effective at helping to meet my goals. I feel much more confident about both of these technologies and am excited to incorporate them into my lessons. Both of these tools could be very effective at engaging my students in the content material we are covering. The fact that a website can be viewed by anyone could really motivate my students to do their best work if they were to create their own for some type of project. In order for my students to use the flip videos for class projects, I need to talk with the IT department about having the software installed on computers throughout the school. In regards to the class website, I would love to see some examples of great sites that teachers have developed for their classes. I tried to research this but have found some pretty average sites. If anyone could direct me to some great websites that I could visit for inspiration, I would really appreciate it. One of my next steps is to add links from my site to the high school, internet grading, and the AEA online site which students can use for research. I also need to add information to the other courses I have so that all students can benefit. I am anxious to capture more video of my classes so that I can add it to my portfolio. In working towards these goals, I need to allow myself the time needed to do an effective job with them.

Jenny

Resources

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

The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•T). (n.d.). International Society for Technology in Education Home. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

Carrying Out My Game Plan

One of the goals I established for myself last week was to utilize Flip Video technology so that I can record clips of my lessons. I have made quite a bit of progress in this area. Using one of the school’s new flip cameras, I recorded clips of a lesson where I had students utilizing the Mimio. I chose to record portions of this lesson so that I can demonstrate my ability to engage students through the use of technology. I tried to upload the clips onto my school laptop and found that I was unable to do so without administrative rights. The IT department will be installing the software onto my laptop. Until it is installed onto my computer, I have uploaded the clips to my personal computer. My next step is to edit the clips into a movie so that I can include it with my portfolio. A lot of staff development time in my school has been spent considering the level that we are engaging the students in. Because of this, I have decided to primarily record my students in action. I think that this best demonstrates the kind of work that I am asking the students to do. I was asked last week if I would share my lessons on the Internet. After considering this, I do not believe that I will as the videos will contain shots of my students. It would be a great deal of work to have each student complete a consent form so that I could upload the files to the Internet. This is a step that I am not willing to take on at this point. Therefore, I will collect the clips and compile them onto a DVD. I may use the clips to demonstrate to other faculty how I use various types of technology. They could also be shared with administration during the evaluation process. Most importantly, I will use them to evaluate my teaching practice.

The progress that I have made in regards to my goal of incorporating a class blog and individual blogs for students is much slower. There is great potential to improve collaboration and communication among students through the effective use of a blog. Asynchronous discussion allows students who may hesitate to participate in class discussion more time to formulate their thoughts (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). I have spoken with my IT department about implementing blogs. They informed me that next year each teacher will be provided with a blog site through the school’s server. I will continue to pursue creating my own blog site so that I can better communicate with students and parents and then transition to the school’s blog as it becomes available. I am interested in having my students create their own blogs and I would love any guidance people could give me on this as it is out of my comfort zone. Is it necessary to have students creating their own blog sites as I could post questions to begin the reflection process on mine and then just have them contribute their? (It seems like this would promote discussion with me and not with the other students.) Does anyone have any sites to recommend? Are there sites that you can control who can view the blogs? Does it defeat the purpose of blogging if they cannot be viewed by outside sources? There are many areas of this that I need to research. The use of blogs has been very limited at my school so I hope that some of you can provide me with some guidance.

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