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