Which came first, the content or the computer?

Each week we have been asked to look at technology in our own class rooms and to think about ways it can be incorporated.  Each week I start out thinking that most technologies might work for everyone else but not me and then each week my perspective shifts when I start to explore our resources from the course as well as listen to the voices of my cohort.  At the beginning of this course we were asked to think about what our GAME plan would be with regard to technology and near the end my goal is still the same. As an educator I want to become better versed in using technology with my learners but I think that perhaps the action part is now a little clearer. Instead of just saying that I want to get better I can quantify that by including digital story telling or a class wiki/blog into the actual long range timeline for each course I teach.  Currently I do not have specific content or lessons ear marked for these particular technologies but I feel very aware of the need to deliberately write these technologies into my plans for the returning semester at the end of the summer.   This is something that I will incorporate when I set up each class.

Dr. Peggy Ertmer challenged us that we must not just include technology in our class rooms but we must be confident in how we use it (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010b). To this end I feel as if  the first step in developing this confidence is to pick and practice; pick a particular technology and actually practice using it myself before I offer it to my students.  My goal this summer is to spend time with just me and my computer so I can explore class room technology in a relatively low pressure environment. As far as monitoring and evaluating this process, I need to embrace both flexibility and critical analysis.  When new technology presents itself we may not want to necessarily have to be the first to try it but then again we probably do not want to be the last to set the old aside.  Somewhere in the middle is a balance where technology meets content soundly and realistically.  I am starting to feel as if perhaps I am looking at technology the wrong way. Instead of trying to find out what it can do in my class room I need to determine what I want to do then find a technology that allows that to happen. Vicki Davis and Caitlyn Thompson, both teachers, urge us to think of things we want to learn and do then to incorporate those new skills into our class room (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010b) so I started to think of what a class room wish list for me would look like so that I could back into  how technology might help me to accomplish this. 

So for my class room I want…my sons ask me tongue in cheek, “how’s it feel to want?”, implying that I am not going to get my way, however I think that with the right mindset and long enough employment it is all attainable. So anyway, for my class room I want…

-…students to have discussions to respond to prompts about issues in science such as genetic testing, resource management or antibiotic resistance. I want it to be creative but also assessable.  The technology component would be to do this online through a class wiki page or blog.

-…students to turn work into me in such a way that I have remote access to it readily and can leave specific feedback for students while assuring academic integrity.  Currently I can do this via email but it is clumsy and unwieldy and difficult to keep different classes separate.  Surely there is a class room management and organization system that will help me to do this and as soon as I am not writing papers of my own, I am going to Edmodo to start exploring this as an option.

-…students to collaborate at multiple levels. Groups in the class room are a start but I would like to extend this to include online collaboration and communication. Dr. Arnie Abrams assures us that technology such as digital story telling develops multiple skills in our students across diverse curricula (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010a)

-…students to answer questions and question answers. This takes research to assemble the variety of information needed to support or refute a stance. High school students are quick to passionately embrace a cause or fight an injustice. I want them to have as much perspective as possible to accomplish this. The internet offers an unlimited menu. By teaching them how to critically analyze and weigh information in order to make their own decisions, they should never be disappointed by the meal they create. 

-…students to create and spin and extend and expand beyond their own brain boundaries.  The variety of creative software is extensive which should allow each student to make individual connections with content in ways that best suit their learning style.  Animations, videos, voice overs, stories and presentations all become unique to the learner in spite of the common origin of the core concept.

Most importantly, I want to feel as if technology is my friend and not a conspiracy created by dark shadowy figures with pocket protectors and taped glasses meant to undo my ability to sleep at night or calculate a simple restaurant tip without having to take off my shoes to count.  I simply want to be able to catch a breath before the next technology beast shows its face demanding class time, resources and brain power.  The greatest reassurance comes from what many of the speakers and educators highlighted throughout the past seven weeks have reiterated; technology supports the content I want to present in my class room and not the other way around. I am Master of my own GAME if only set up the board before the first move.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Spotlight on Technology: Digital Story Telling, Part One.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Promoting Self-Directed       Learning with Technology.

Mick Jagger Lied. Time is NOT on My Side!

     Perhaps it is providence that this week’s chapter in Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use by Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009) focuses on using technology in assessments.  As my school year comes to a close most content areas are required to administer a post test that will be scored electronically and uploaded to a secure data information site called Pearson Inform.  Early next week I will administer this county-created post test. It’s the same as the pre-test that was given at the beginning of the school year and our county wants to collect measurable data on student academic growth.  I am hoping that by accessing this data over the summer—yes even though there will be no students, many educators simply do not or cannot make a clean break from all this glamor—I can see areas where my students got it and where my students didn’t.  I think that this will help me to adjust my curriculum for next semester so that I can begin with the end in mind.  Pearson Inform is available year round and we have been encouraged to develop data driven instruction. I’m not sure what that will look like but perhaps after seeing post test results in a few weeks will help in directing my next steps. Another use of data revolves around the state HSA results.  Pearson Inform is also used to access those test scores and I can look at specific areas of the biology assessment to see which units students excelled in and which areas they did not perform as well.  I can discuss and share results with the other Biology teachers in the building over the summer or at our first few professional days when we return to see if it is isolated or across the board for all students.  This will draw attention to those areas of the curriculum that I need to be more deliberate with planning a variety of learning opportunities and assessments.

     I feel as if there are plenty of resources available both online and through my school system to learn about technology and even practice the skills. Our district is gearing up to encourage the development of online learning and we have even had some BlackBoard  discussions with teachers form other schools. It was rather time consuming and although, probably the wave of the future, we had other things that needed our time and attention, like grades and parent contact, and breathing.  Earlier in the year, I attempted to keep up with the Smarty Pants Club in my school, a group put together by knowing teachers to help some of the less initiated negotiate the perils of their insidious interactive white boards…but I didn’t have the time to attend after school sessions.  Another colleague has graciously shared every power point, video clip, interactive web site and electronic worksheet version he has so that I could beef up my own curriculum in a course that I was teaching for the first time….but I didn’t have the time to access them effectively.  Another hall mate has often come to my rescue to pull me from the gaping jaws of digital vertigo only to have to repeat the feat multiple times because I didn’t commit it to my technological toolbox for lack of…you guessed it…time. The greatest limit I am finding in developing my technology skills is a lack of time or more so an overabundance of tasks and have tos and not enough hours to budget to committing it all to my psyche and laptop computer.  

     I really do want to smoothly integrate technology into my curriculum so that it supports it and extends it through diverse activities, assessments and real life connections.  I am starting to realize that I probably need to go back to squares, so to speak and look at not only the material that must be covered for the next semester but the timeline for doing so.  Over the years I have accumulated bits and pieces from various sources and I found that this year in particular due to having to float between two class rooms and teaching five classes a day instead of four, lack of organization was a huge stumbling block.  My goal is to combine better paper planning with better digital planning. Questions that will arise are what should I keep and what should I change?  In order to make some units more complete I will need to search for resources such as video clips and hands on activities that I can build into my curriculum and I need to streamline all of the digital files I have.  They do me no good if I cannot find them or I forget to integrate them intot he lesson at the appropriate time. 

     I envision a class room where my students are actively engaged and interacting with content in authentic ways.  I can get that sometimes only to feel rubber banded back to direct instruction or worse yet, content without substance or connectedness.  I’m looking to include some sound technologies that support my science content not technology that merely puts a bubble or a caption on an image or flashes cutesy graphics.  I see technology as a tool for the class room not a toy and I am going to try and find other educators who can discuss how they are specifically using a particular technology like a wiki discussion page or a voice thread in their classes.  I would like to find lesson plans already started that I can adjust to specifically fit my teaching style and available resources.  I often think of how I would modify an assignment or activity after the fact and by then the moment has passed.  I wonder if we will ever get the luxury of truly collaborating with our peers for the benefit of our individual classrooms?  All it takes is a little time right?

The Name of the Game is GAME

     This week I have been asked to revisit my personal GAME plan to determine how I will move from wanting to use more technology to support my content in the class room (NETs, 2013) to actually making it happen.  Ironically I feel as if I am in a week at school that has been quite low tech.  We are close to the end of the school year and in the middle of HSA testing which tends to really scramble the schedule.  Granted the particular HSA test I proctored this week was administered solely online but all I had to be able to do was remember my password to enter the testing site from a URL link that my administrator sent me.  It only took me four tries.  My Research and Design students are busily engaged in collecting data for their projects and while some students are pecking away furiously on the keyboard, others are pouring water in coffee cans out in the dirt, some are counting wetland plants and digging roots up and a few others are hand razing a site to plant native bushes and trees to increase bio-diversity. I only got a little bit of poison ivy but they were engaged in real life, hands on inquiry and problem based- learning (Laureate Education, Inc., 2013), not a bad trade off. 

     I would love to spend a few days at the end of the school year to really learn about my interactive white board at the side of my more well trained room neighbors and I am confident that I probably have sufficient IQ to at least be able to turn it on and switch pen colors but in reality the last few days will most likely be spent frantically entering grades (online at least) and filing errant papers at least until I become so overwhelmed that I simply pick a filing cabinet drawer as a hiding place. (For the papers, not me) I figure they will be there when I come back in the fall or if I don’t come back, well then they will be my gift to the next educational martyr.  I must admit that I am hoping to be able to go through the labyrinth of electronic files and odds and ends with the purpose of better organizing them into self-contained units.  Frequently I find that I am out of sequence or forget to use a resource because it is not in the proper electronic file.  I also know that I have accumulated multiple copies of many files and clips and I have gaps in other areas that I would like to fill with resources such as web quests, animations and simulations, science songs and video clips.  If I can get my own technology resources in order then I hope to be able to better integrate new ones in the future.  One of my colleagues has an uncanny ability to organize a unit from first tease to final assessment and include every worksheet, web link, video and graphic in between. He has offered to share his units at the end of the year because he does not want me to be bored over the impending summer. Another colleague completes nearly every aspect of his curriculum on computers so he is a good resource for technical advice.  I feel as if each semester I get a little better and a bit more automatic with being able to find strategies to respond to the needs of my students but admittedly I am still gloriously under planned most days, much to the chagrin of my dutiful and by the book administrators.  Thinking content first, technology next will help me to streamline my timeline.

     Meanwhile I know that I must maintain the commitment to explore new technologies and to try to figure out how I could use them to support my content with a fresh start next semester.  The greatest resource I will need is time.  Much of my inability to develop my own personal technological growth stems from being constantly pulled in multiple directions.  My situation is not unique but it is currently mine.  I have to try to pick and choose what will truly work and what will just rob me of more time. I find that I am much more aware of the technology looking at it not so much for its bells and whistles but from how it can help me to focus on learning outcomes.  This will help me to customize instruction to meet the needs of all my learners (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010a). So far, as a result of tutoring several students who are out of the building I have been able to see projects and activities that other teachers are using in their class rooms.  This has allowed me to think about how I might use similar technologies such as a Prezi, voice thread or an Imovie to extend my own content in the future.  As far as monitoring my own progress I suppose that will come down to how long I can maintain a school mind set once released from the windowless room that is my learning environment but I do believe that I will pick it up again quickly in August.  Having online courses over the summer will hopefully afford me the luxury of exploring technology without the burden of external distractions.

I would like to use the computer as a tutor through animations and interactive websites, as a tour guide on web quests , a research tool via data bases and a communication tool both individually and collaboratively.  If I can get my students to connected computers on a regular basis then I say GAME on!

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Meeting the Needs of Learners with Technology, Part 1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Promoting Self-Directed       Learning with Technology.

NETS-t retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets_for_teachers_2000.pdf?sfvrsn=2 on 5-15-13. (2000).

It's all fun and games until I touch a computer

     In the early morning hours on the dairy farm I often ask the reticent Farmer, what he is thinking about. His universal response almost always includes that he is trying to get together a game plan for the day. Working with temperamental livestock, aging machinery, fleeting daylight and unpredictable weather makes even the most carefully laid plans precarious at best but within that framework is not only the initial goal and plan of action but some sort of monitoring and evaluation to determine whether the current course of action is still the best one for the situation at hand.  I have found that much of what I have learned on the farm has served me well in the class room as well.  As an educator it is important that each day I too have a GAME plan. Dr. Katherine Cennamo outlines this in the Self-directed Learner presented by Laureate Education (2010b) when she states that the goal setting and action phases take place when we create and teach our lesson plans and that the monitoring and evaluation phases revolve around not only student learning but teacher effectiveness.

     As our world and the learners in it change we are realizing the need for educators to be more digitally knowledgeable and that if these digital skills are to be incorporated into our content areas effectively teachers must not only have the knowledge of the technology but they must also be confident in how they are using it states Dr. Peggy Ertmer in the video resource, Content Area Learning also presented by Laureate Education (2010a).  If we are to prepare our students to be more digitally connected in a global society then educators must have resources with which to develop these skills and standards by which to measure them. Enter NETS or National Educational Technology Standards.  According to the International Society for Technology in Education or ISTE, using NETS improves higher order and critical thinking skills around student centered and project based learning. The result is students that are more prepared to be competitive in a changing global society. NETS for teachers revolves around the specific technology skills and knowledge that we should be using in our class rooms.

     Lest you have any questions as to the status of my own current technology skills I need only direct you to the title of this blog above.  With that in mind I am still committed to increasing the amount of technology I am using on my class room. I was encouraged by Biology teacher Tim Best that the use of technology should not be contrived but that it should fit the content we intended to deliver in the first place (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). That makes me feel like I have some choice in how, what and when I use technology.  Perhaps the greatest NETS challenge I have is in knowing how to effectively use the actual technology to develop students thinking skills ((Standard II, Indicator A). For example I am writing this blog entry but to date I am not sure how I could use this particular technology resource in an actual lesson plan or activity for my students. One goal is to incorporate some new technologies like a wiki page or student blog responses into already established content.  However not only am I unsure of the actual science content I would marry it with but I am not sure how to mechanically make it happen.  I think that I would benefit from looking for support from more knowledgeable colleagues and also seeing some lesson plan examples of exactly how other teachers used this type of technology.  There is the action part I suppose but if I am to turn this into a true GAME plan then I must monitor and evaluate student learning and since I cannot determine how I would do this then perhaps I am not ready to use this particular technology yet.

     Meanwhile I can try to find sources and resources that support the required content of my area while using technology ((Standard III, Indicators A and B)Standard III, Indicators A and B).  For Biology there are many interactive web sites as well as those that use animations, video and music to illustrate key concepts.  My goal is to include more of these and the action needed to make this happen will be a combination of planning and organization. I will need to look ahead in my lesson plans to know what sites and activities match which key concepts and follow up by making sure I have the technology resources such as computers, pre-loaded media and interactive white boards ready to be utilized.  Student engagement and feedback should be an indicator that learners are connecting with the content effectively which should be evidenced by improved test and quiz scores as well as higher pass rates on the HSA tests. Monitoring performance on these would lead me to be able to evaluate if the technology was helping to improve student learning.

Ultimately I understand the need to extend our own learning as educators if we are going to effectively model technology skills for our learners so I suppose the best first step is to let the GAME begin! Can I be the banker or at least the race car token?

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Enriching Content Area Learning   Experiences with Technology, Part 1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Promoting Self-Directed       Learning with Technology.

NETS-t retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets_for_teachers_2000.pdf?sfvrsn=2 on 5-15-13. (2000).