A Successful Change Agent - Reflection

As my final class at Walden University (New and Emerging Technologies) comes to an end I feel confident that my quest to implement technology in the classroom will not. I feel that it is not only my duty to continue my efforts to use technology in my classroom, but that I need to advocate for other teachers to change as well. During week 6 and 7 of this course, I was able to create a lesson that used gaming to teach an ecology unit and explored options that would allow my school to receive a grant. I was amazed at how much is offered online and how inexpensive it can be. In fact, the lesson that I designed uses a free program offered through jason.org. The program is funded by donations and grants received from scientific organizations and is able to offer free resources to science teachers. This assignment is just one of many lessons that I will create that use technology instead of traditional teaching methods. The technology allows for more effective teaching and also provides differentiaton to the curriculum that I teach. It allows for students to learn at their own pace and accommodates for many problems that they might have. It will take time, persistence, and the help of others, but I am confident that I will be able to improve my classes and I hope that I will be able to influence other teachers to do the same. People in general, and especially teachers, are resistant to change. I believe that the best way to get others to change is to lead by example. Once kids start going into other classes and talking about how cool mine was, I think that other teachers will be more receptive to change. If not, I will just have to keep trying and bring along as many as I can.

Assessing for Learning - Reflection

As I took the Walden University Course "Reaching and Engaging All Learners Through Technology" I learned some very valuable lessons and continued to change some of my mindsets about technology in the classroom. The first things that I gained was information about how technology could allow me to learn the interests, learning styles, intelligence preferences, and learning profiles of my students. I still love to have casual conversations with students to get to know them, but often times I miss shy students with this method. Different surveys that we explored will help me to better know and understand the students in my classes. Through discussions and postings on a Google Group, I was able to learn about a ton of different online resources that I would have never known existed. It was great to practice using this type of social networking and in the process find these great resources. Probably the most important thing that I learned from this class is that classes should be designed using the universal design for learning, or UDL. There is no reason why we should not be creating our lessons in a manner that will reach students with diverse needs. It will provide better learning opportunities for all learners and save time because less modifications will be needed in order to meet students' IEP's. Differentiating instruction by using technology helps accommodate the universal design. By using technology as an integral part of the education process, and not as an exception, many more options are available to students and teachers. As a result, many different learners will be given the best opportunity to succeed.

Moodle

Here is a link to my screencast explaining the benefits of a course management site such as Moodle:

http://www.screencast.com/users/mschmoll/folders/Jing/media/04ab36af-bb29-4cc6-9b2e-37d572a6f5e6

References:
Moodle.org: Open-source Community-based Tools for Learning. Web. 23 July 2010 http://moodle.org/.
Seymour Community School District. Web. 23 July 2010. http://moodle.seymour.k12.wi.us/.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). New and Emerging Technologies. Baltimore: Author

UDL

Please click on the following links to view the screencasts explaining Universal Design for Learning.

http://www.screencast.com/users/mschmoll/folders/Jing/media/4345c4cb-ba1f-458a-9a35-409384b7929e

http://www.screencast.com/users/mschmoll/folders/Jing/media/710bf377-425e-45de-9b23-461ee0e8e31e

References:
CAST: Center for Applied Special Technology. Web. 22 July 2010. http://www.cast.org/.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Reaching and Engaging All Learners through Technology. Baltimore: Author

Reflection: Final Blog Post

I found "Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas" to be a particularly helpful course for my professional development. I say this because it allowed me to create lessons that I can specifically use in my Science classes. I also found the GAME Plan to be an outstanding way to set goals and work toward them. Not only did we set a goal, we put it into action, monitored it, and evaluated what we had done. As with anything in education, it is still an ongoing process and I plan to continue working on my GAME Plan to improve my use of the SMART Board in my classroom. I have found many useful websites and received valuable feedback from classmates that are already proficient in their use of similar technology. Often times I find myself on an island as I learn about and implement new strategies into my classroom. This process has allowed me to collaborate with other teaching professionals that helped me to see things in a different way. It provided me with a weekly check in to see if I was meeting my goal.

The new learning that I have done as a result of my GAME Plan will be valuable to my students as I implement the strategies into my classes. Simply having access to great technology does not improve student learning. It must be used properly to be effective in the classroom. The key now is to continue using my newly gained knowledge to improve my classes instead of simply sitting on what I have learned. Fortunately I will be receiving even more training with the technology this summer and will have time to play with what I have learned. I hope to modify some of the lessons that I already teach by using the technology as well as create new lessons that would not be possible without it. These changes will help my students as I begin school again next fall. It will be especially helpful considering that the things I have learned are specific to the subject that I teach. Thank you to everyone who has helped me so far on this journey and feel free to keep the suggestions coming.

Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) lists the following standards for students: Creativity and Innovation; Communication and Collaboration; Research and Information Fluency; Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making; Digital Citizenship; and Technology Operations and Concepts. (taken from: http://www.iste.org/content/navigationmenu/nets/for_students/nets_s.htm) Just as I have worked on improving my use of the SMART Board in my classroom using the GAME Plan method, students can improve their skills in each of these 6 standards by doing the same. It is neccesary to set small goals over the course of time so that students do not feel overwhelmed. On the other hand, a lot of the standards go hand-in-hand. A well designed lesson should incorporate critical thinking and problem solving skills while also addressing some of the other standards as well. Most of the projects that I can think of would require some type of research and just about all ideas can use some type of collaboration aided by technology. I think that the key is to determine what content area standard is trying to be reached and then use the technology standards to enhance the experience for the students. By using the technology standards, the students will not simply be learning science, math, reading, etc. skills. They will be improving their 21st Century skills as well.

GAME Plan Survey

As I continue on my journey to improve my skills using the SMART Board that I have had recently installed in my classroom I decided to tap into the knowledge and opinions of the students before they were gone for the summer. After they finished their final exams I had them complete a short survey to help me to get an idea of where they are at when it comes to the board. What I learned from the survey is that the students in general really like using the board. They admit to being reluctant at first but that when they do not have a choice, they usually end up enjoying the experience they had as they used the board. They particularly liked using it in ways that had them competing against other individuals or teams because they felt like it helped them forget that they were in school (at this time of the year they will openly admit that they would rather not be in school). It would not necessarily require the interactive technology, but the kids really liked playing games in which they drew pictures to try and get others to guess what concept or vocabulary term that they are trying to depict. Not only do they have fun with this, but it also then provides a visual image that the students can use to correlate with the term in their minds for future recollection. As the school year comes to a close and my little cherubs embark upon their summer vacations, I look forward to some down time followed by some relaxed exploration of how I can use the board better with the next group of students that I will have next year.