GAME Plan Week 5

This week after to talking to a trusted colleague of mine who is very helpful and informative with technology eased a bit of my anxiety. During this weeks application assignment, he led me through some ideas and brought to my attention some new technology that is out there that would help with PBL and how to implement it in my classroom. I am was born in the 1960's and grew up in the 70's and early 1980's, this technology at times and the push towards this type of teaching has me a bit apprehensive. Designing this GAME plan, these courses at Walden has kept me a bit more focused and has forced me to get my hands dirty. As I was researching the web this week trying to create a PBL lesson and speaking with my colleague I have come to the conclusion that the only way to meet my goals is to take some risk move outside my safety net and relax and do the best I can. I know I have a long way to go, but I just need to relax and rely on my classmates, colleagues, and friends to guide me in the proper directions.

GAME Plan Week 4

After revisiting my GAME plan for integrating technology into my area of instruction. I teach health, PE, and one section of world history. In my health class I have done a cross curriculum activity using video and video editing to construct health promotional ads. I was discussing this with a classmate during our discussion portion of this weeks lesson. I thinking of how I could implement this type of lesson in either my PE class or world history. I believe the easier of the two would be PE because of the relationship with health, but I really want to focus on the world history.

Ever since I watched the movie Teachers, I have often wondered how a role playing activity would assist my students with grasping the concepts of unit and the people involved in constructing our world history. Each unit always has at least ten or more key characters that play major roles and at least another ten that may have had an influence on that particular era. I would like to see my students either create a promotional ad for instance the crusades, the inquisition, or the Roman Empire. I think the students could research the any background information construct a dialog, storyboards, and a video presentation. Students could work in teams or pairs to develop their assignment. This project based activity would definitely be fun as well as informative for my students.

What have I learned so far?
I have learned that technology can and will be an important part of a 21st century learning experience. I have also learned that you need to have a focus of why technology is going to be implemented into a lesson.

What questions have arised?
Will my district ever provide enough funds to increase the volume of availability of technology. As of right now, I would have to say no. It will be a difficult task to begin to explore more lessons that are student based with the of technology if the resources are unavailable.

GAME Plan

As I begin the journey of setting a GAME plan for a digital experience I have to reflect on the many years of teaching without the use or even the thought of technology. I see a resource that had to be gathered in a library, periodicals, and micro film. Now with one click of a button you have the whole world to explore for information and resources. As I was searching through the ISTE and the NETS-T I was thinking about how I can become a more proficient teacher when it comes to implimenting technology into my everyday teaching.

I looked at two of the standards I would like to improve upon and set new goals for myself to follow through with them those where standard one and three. The first is 1. Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity. I teach at an At-Risk high school. My students have a difficult time thinking outside the box and using any creativity when it comes to learning. I know at times it is up to me to model to my students and believe me I try, but it has not been with use of technology or a digital experience. It has been difficult in my building because our technology is so limited and unfunded. I know personally I have to move outside the box myself and take some risk to try to get my more involved in 21st century learning. I would definitely would like to use standard one to impliment more real world issues in my world history class. In that class I know that there are many occasions where the use of technology could be used to explore issues of the past that can resolve or compared to an issue from the present. The interent can be a tool to do just that. There are plenty of sites, webquest or other resources that can help students explore the web and find valid information to support their arguements. The second is 3. Model digital age work and learning. at this point in time with the district grading program and email accounts it has been much easier to communicate with parents on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis without setting up a person to person meeting. The only draw back is you are not setting a personal relationship with the parents of the students. I still feel it is important to have that relationship and sometimes it can because of technology that has been lost. I know that I do most of my lesson, quizzes, PowerPoints, and test using some technolgy. All of the grading and attendance is all on a computer program and even now our students are doing credit recovery over the internet using a program called E 20/20. The problem I have is trying to master all of this. I am 43 years old and at times I feel uncomfortable or I guess I lack confidence in my abilities because some of this technology I just do not understand or have practiced it enough. That Is why I am doing my masters in technology so i can improve and learn more skills so I con model it for students with confidence.

To monitor my progress I intend to keep a daily journal of when I use technology and when I should have used technology and then refelect each week on how to improve upon what I did or did not do. To improve upon this I intend to see what other teachers are doing, ask about ways that I can use technology and what is the best avenue to take when creating a digital learning experience. i have some of my own ideas, but I want to be confident in them and jump outside my limited technology box and dive right in.

Final Reflection

As I reflect upon my personal learning theory that will be continually implemented in my instructional practice each day with each new lesson, I will continue to set high goals for my students to reach and in return, I must have high expectations to teach them. I can honestly say that each student that enters my classroom is important and I will do what is necessary to provide them with the best chance of receiving a quality education and become a solid member of a society. This learning theory that we have been studying over time has been amended on several occasions even more so now with the use of technology as another tool for learning. I am positive knowing that in the future it will be challenged and changed again.

This era of technology that is taking roots in the education profession, I know that I must make some positive adaptations to my own personal theory. I know now that technology is a necessity in our classrooms and for our multi-tasking students. This technology boom in education has forced me to become more aware and unafraid of the challenges that technology presents, but at the same time I know it is best for my students. I am a digital immigrant it has taken me some time to integrate technology into my lessons without fear and I truly believe in the statement “You’ve come a long way Baby” has had a huge impact for me with the use of technology in my area of teaching. I now know that web based learning has endless possibilities for myself and my students.

In Michigan are educational system is at an all time low and it is Unfortunate that my technically challenged school district, my classes will not have much access to computer lab. Although, when I do get a chance to use the lab, my ultimate goal would be to develop lessons that will include web quest, concept mapping, blogging, and Excel. I already use PowerPoint for all my notes, and recently our school has purchased a remote system that allows students to answer questions by pressing their own personal remote pad and it allows the teacher to save all the data of all wrong answers instantaneously. Even though are states educational system is poor, our district is doing its best to make some important financial moves to improve our technology; recently they have installed overhead projectors that are directly connected to our computers in our rooms. It was a big step for them and it has made our life much easier and updated. I am still 100% in favor of technology and the effects it can have on the learning process. I am excited about the endless possibilities technology has had and will have in the near future in education but, the problem is of course money. Technology does not come cheap and until local, state and national governments come together, the lack of funding will inhibit the outcome and the future of its use.

Voice Threads

http://voicethread.com/share/573598/

I feel that voice threads can give you an opportunity as another instructional tool for learning. If I were to create my own web page or blog for my students I could use a thread to give directions, prompt them for an assignment or a review exercise, and it would allow a student to either read or listen to the prompt. It would take some time to establish , but it would definitely be an idea I would like to implement. Another great way I could possibly use a voice thread would for note taking or missed assignments. Students could go my web page and retrieve the notes from that day and get an explanation of the missing assignments and procedures. Again I must stress that in my district not many of our students have access to the internet at home. This would be great if each one of my students did, but the reality of it all is that they do not.

Relationships to social learning theories

As I stated in my discussions this week, in our world today, I feel social learning through interacting and networking is a huge step toward an learning environment for growth and meaning. The students of today are much different from those students of the past, myself included. I observe the students and watch they use technology to interact with themselves and their social connections. I have watched my football and hockey players immediately get out of a practice or a game and go to their phones and start texting. I hear my players and students discuss their game play on-line against each other. As educators we need to find a method to use this as a strategy and implement it into are classrooms to create a social yet a instructional learning atmosphere.


Anytime you can put students together to work as a team it will generate a positive environment for learning. With that in mind, you must be fair and keep the intended purpose of these cooperative groups. In other words do not stack the teams. If the lesson for the groups include the use of technology, I find it would be a necessity to divide the teams into small groups, allow them to chose their different roles for the group, and provide them with a lesson that has structure. In the past when I have used cooperative groups I only will allow no more than four students per group. If it a web quest or an on-line assignment it may only have 2-3 students per station.

As I went through the chapter I viewed several ideas on how to implement technology with cooperative groups and I found them quite interesting. Again though, in my school availability is a problem. I have used web quest on several occasions and have used multimedia video assignments, but I really like the idea of my students creating their own web pages. This would be very good assignment for my health and world history class. What a great way for them to work together as a team, using their creativity to develop their own web site, and finally to research and up date it over a long term time period. This should generate a productive social atmosphere with all the student with group sharing their ideas and the other groups looking and try to out do the others sites. This lesson however, must be supportive to the task at hand and have a solid objective.

Constructivist/Constructionist Learning Theories

WOW!, we have come a long way in educational theories. During my experience over the past 11 years I have seen many theories and strategies for learning come and go. It seems to me that the educational guru's are always trying to reinvent the wheel. I know that must sound negative but, I feel that these theories and I must state again "theories" are just that. The leaders in education use these theories time and time again, over and over but with a different twist each time. Now with technology becoming a demand in education, governments, districts, administrators find themselves jumping on the band wagon. I am all in favor of the implementation of technology in my classroom, but until they allow everyone with same opportunity and funding it is going to be impossible.

Constructionist learning is a theory I have been using for quite a while. This theory allows for freedom in the learning environment without restriction. It allows students to build upon prior and future knowledge and an avenue to which they can express what they know and have learned. I teach at an At-Risk high school. My students have a chip on their shoulders about education and they come to us primarily with a bad attitude. Our staff is always looking for new ways to present our curriculum to our students and strategies that our kids will be successful at. In my school we have very limited access to computers. Our lab has 15 working stations which is divided by 8 staff members with an average of 25 students per class. Other than our staff computers this does not leave us much time to create lessons that involve the use of technology. In a perfect world though, I am all in favor having a technology based curriculum and have a variety ways for each of my subjects I could use these theories in.

One idea I had would be for my students in my advanced physical education class that is primarily weightlifting and conditioning to incorporate technology via a spread sheet for their fitness journals. After a period of time I would have them chart their results and have them form a hypotheses of what their results will be by the end of the course. They could accumulate their data and make projections and formulate a conclusion for their final project. Students could also research diets, supplements and other physical fitness strategies or exercises to improve their own fitness. I already am using something similar, but not with the assistance of technology. I agree this would give my students a much easier and exciting way, plus it would give a break from gym.