The End of My Master's Journey

As I conclude me final class in my pursuit of my Masters degree in Technology Integration, I find myself ready to be done. Thought the program in general started off slow and required me to push through in order to complete the core classes, the program concluded itself with its best classes for the last 24 weeks. I am sure in months to come I will be wanting more information and technology options, but for now, I want to get back to school to “play” with all that I have learned in these last three classes.

Being that I have been teaching in a one-to-one laptop technology rich environment for the past four years, my perspective and experience has been different than that of many of my fellow classmates. I have been pleased with the communication and sharing of ideas/resources as well as the support and feedback. At times the assignments were challenging to me as I felt that my current teaching assignment was ahead of what we were being asked to plan or forecast to implement. However, I was able to use that experience to create an improvement plan or a method to expand my students use of technology.

I am unclear of how I will change my teaching with technology based on this more recent class alone except for my desire to find a way to bring MUVEs into the classroom. Still I believe my move to the Tech Academy will alter my teaching more than one specific class. Having block classes rather than hourly classes and a fixed set of 90 students maximum verses my usual 150+, will certainly provide me more opportunity as a teacher to work close and more in depth with my students. Additionally, the simply face the academy students requested the program rather were just told “this your class” as the general population is told, will I believe present me with a different attitude and level of interest than I have ever experienced before.

I do know from prior experience that merely the initials of MA Tech Integration after my name will help me in working with my schools administration as well as up at the district. It took me two solid years of pushing and volunteering to earn minimal recognition for my abilities in Moodle and still have been a bit like a friend of the inner circle rather than a member. Now with the completion of my degree, I believe I will be more accepted or invited to be a member as well as help drive technology advances. I have had the knowledge and the abilities, but now I have the credential to match.

Now it will be onward towards my next adventure and personal goal of completing my doctorate in teacher leadership. I am certain that across those three years, my experience at Walden’s and my Technology Integration courses will continue as a great resource and support to my successful completion of my Educational Doctorate.

Looking Back

As our course on Reaching and Engaging ALL Learners Through Technology draws to a conclusion, I find myself pleased with how renewed and revitalized I feel with how I integrate technology on a regular basis. I am even more satisfied with how well I use technology to differentiate my lessons so that I can strive to reach and engage all of my students no matter what level of English or reading they may be as well as taking in account for their learning styles and preferences.

As a teacher in a one-to-one laptop rich environment, I sometimes take my access and options of technology for granted. I had not stopped and thought much about “what if I did not have technology so fully integrated?”. But during this course, I not only had the opportunity to explore that thought but also happened to have two occurrences where our school’s intranet server and wireless ports failed. It was a challenge mental and academically to revert to the “old fashion style of teaching” for even those two – three day occurrences. In some ways it was good for me as a teacher to stop and reflect while in other ways it was a great experience for the kids to find a renewed appreciation of laptops.

During this course, I also have some time to refocus some of my lesson plans on using more UDL methods and DI guidelines as I did when I first started teaching. As I wrap up my 5th year of teaching and my 3rd year in a one-to-one laptop environment it was good to take a course that do directly focused on the essentials and structure of UDL and DI. I think over time, we a teachers get into our own system or routines. Through this course, I was able to dust off my “planning” brain and refresh my lesson plans.

I did not make any specific changes to my current lessons plans during this course, though I did recreate or create from scratch some newer technology UDL lessons on energy and circuits during this course. The only immediate change I feel I made during this course to my “instructional method” or “teaching style”, was that I introduced a new “quarter-way” and “three-quarter way” checks with my longer (4 & 5 week unit) to ensure that my ELL and IEP students were not lost early on or after the mid-way check I traditionally did. I used our technology options of “student surveys” and “choice menus” to gage not only their understanding but their interest in the topics thus far.

As this semester wraps up and I enter my last semester with Walden’s before graduating, I find myself very pleased with how enjoyable, engaging and relevant this Master’s degree program has been for me. My two prior programs, one with PLU in education and the Science focus with Waldens, were not engaging my educational focus or direction nor were challenging me intellectually. I am eager to continue with these last two classes and enthralled with what more technology wise I might be exposed to in our next course. From there it will be onward towards my doctorate degree with Walden’s as I move into my second educational love, leadership. Together with the expansive exposure to educational technology options and my doctoral studies in teacher leadership, I am two steps closer to my career goal.

Looking back at the GAME plan....

Using the GAME Plan concept helped me focus more on the software program I was learning. Usually when I try a new program, I do not necessarily make a focused effort on it as much as I probably should. Partly because of the volume of new programs being thrown at me in our one-to-one educational environment and partly because I am going a mile a minute. The GAME plan system made me slow down (just a bit) and focus a little more on my actions. I think as a teacher this was a good things because I thought more like a student than a teacher.

I plan to use the GAME plan with my students in the spring when we start our energy unit. I think it will help them focus more on how to use the new software program they chose (publisher, edublog.com and voice thread). I also think it will be a good way for me to introduce using Jing to have them demonstrate their learning/using of the website with the creation of a screen capture.

I am usually very flexable with students and wanting to use other programs but with the GAME Plan process, I aim to be less flexable and sort of force (or more push and nudge) them to use the required program. My hope is that with being more strict, my students will push through a road block or challenging part and overcome to be successful with a new software option rather than falling back and simply using something they already know.

All and all the GAME plan system is a good structure to use for both myself and my students. I can see it working as a great organizational planning tool as my middle school kids grow and prepare to be out in the "real world" without their teacher then to guide them. They can learn to guide themselves.

Preparing My Kids for Meeting NETS Goals

The ISTENETS for Students has an expectation of preparing our kids for tomorrow in their ability to communicate and collaborate. In the world we live in where social networking is a main force of collaboration it seems the worlds is preparing our kids to meet that goal.

Our job as educators is to help them know how to properly meet that goal. How to use social networking and collaborating in a beneficial educational and productive way not just to socialize and gab. With the massive size of the world, this ability to communicate with foreign countries and other states makes this world rather small.

The strategy of GAME can be a great tool in helping our students make a goal, activitly execute that goal and monitor as well as as evaluate their successed and failures. With our next unit and the focus on energy (sources and aspects), my students will be collaborating with another school to learn more, share ideas, and discuss possibilities. By helping them structure their plans with the GAME plan system, I believe they will be more successful, less like to stray off task in their collaborating and discussions.

Because GAME requires the monitoring of action as well as the evaluation of those actions, I think students will be able to find guidence in the structure. Because students (individually or in groups) will be using a blog to record their work, I can access/follow their blogs. As the teacher, I can comment and help keep them on track. Using the structure of GAME plan I can also ask them to revert back to the structure of their plan and work from where they strayed, when straying occurrs.

Using GAME plan will also help my students work at being a higher quality of digital citizens. Although they have grown up with the internet as digital natives, not many of them at their tender age of 12 to 14 know how to be good digital citizens. Like the NETS goal aims students need to be appropriate with their uses of technology as well as safe and legal. As educators, we can use the Goal and Action aspects of GAME to demonstrate and educate about the digital citizen actions. With the monitors and evulating aspects, there will be time for reflection and evaluation of how well them followed quality digital citzenship.

GAME Plan is great for Students too!

When we first were assigned the reading and GAME plan development activity, my initial thought was “what a great concept to work with students”. Then as we got started I wondered if it really could be something to use with students. It seemed like it would be a side track from my already packed science curriculum. But as we processed through it the steps over 6 weeks, I began to see how it was possible to blend in with my sciences when we set up a larger project.

In a month from now, we will be starting our last large 6 week unit on Energy. My goal with my kids outside of science content is it prepare them for high school without hand holding. I think the structure of GAME is something that middle school students can use. It will be interesting to see what “goals” my students will chose for their GAME plan.

On a personal note, though I am frequently learning and exploring technology applications, using the GAME plan structure made me more conscience and more focused on my learning process and certainly more reflective on the progress. I was also more time conscience of my work where in the past I haven’t gauged the window of time so much before. It is something that I will use again in the coming years of learning new and more technology. I can also see other ways of applying the GAME to other educational adventures such as pursuing my PhD next.

Not as Successful as Desired - But we survived...

Well the program of VoiceThread proved to be a little too challenging or advanced for some of my kids. While others tended to be successful and created some fun animations that I still don't know how to do.

We problem solved for those who were not able to handle the program. Some chose to use PowerPoint because they were comfortable and capable of using that program to create an automated digital story while some others asked to use PhotoStory.

Their favorite part was search and sorting the photos. I think that this was a successful process for them as they had to create the story line and how to organize the process. I originally looked to Digital Story Telling for me as a teacher to be able to assess what the student learned of the concept. However, now as I watched them use it I say that as students they found the creation project of the story to be very beneficial with the process of what they did to create the model as well as clarifying their understanding of the model.

I am excited tomorrow to see what they have created and their submissions. I can see later in the year, trying this again where they can be even more creative and make a more detailed science digital story. But for now, it was a good start. Practice makes perfect as they say.

Adventuring into Digital Story Telling

So tomorrow is the big day... Digital Story Creating will begin... We are only 1 day behind and that is okay. The marshmallow atom builing activity took a bit more time for some students than initally thought. Amazing some of my lower level learners did better at this activity than some of my honor students. Partly because I gave my lower level learner smaller atoms (with under 10 electrons) while my honors kids had larger atoms with 15 to 20 electrons.

The ceiling with all the atoms hanging from it looks really cool. The look actually has me deciding that for their element card (for our giant periodic table - next week's project) I am going to have the kids print a second copy so I can hang them from the ceiling in the classroom too.

Now that the kids have all their atoms built and I have taken photos of each of them with their atom and their atom seperately, they can being creating invidivual digital stories about their atoms. To help combat our shortage of digital cameras, I have taken a series of stock photos (each color marshmellow and other supplies used along with close ups of orbital rings and nucleus). This way they don't have to try to fight for camera time. It took a little brain storming with my team mates to decided how to battle the shortage of cameras.

I am also still short audio recording equipment as I wasn't able to secure 18 headsets. Though I have found an option for the same headsets for only $8 (instead of the orginal $18 each) it is too late to order. I am hoping with my observation being tomorrow too, that my Vice Principal will see the need and push my principal to buy them.

I am nervous about trying the first digital story telling while being observed for my annual evalution but I think I can handle it. My original observation was suppose to be 2 weeks ago but due to schedule conflicts it has been rescheduled. I won't change my "lesson plan" just to be observed. I feel fake doing that. The positive is that LH is coming to observe me during my best behaved class and my class is willing to let me "practice" on them for activities. It will go well. I think he will be pleased to see the kids engaged.