GAME Plan!!

G: My goal will be to Model Digital-Age Work and Learning and Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments.

A: I will begin to look at the curriculum for the up coming year and design digital-age learning experiences to go along with what I will be teaching. By doing this and setting up a blog for students and teachers throughout the school to talk. Other teachers as well as students will be seeing the modeling of digital age learning.
M: I will monitor the progress by watching the students in my classroom grow. I will monitor the progress of the staff by helping other teachers and watching myself become a change agent.
E: I will see if others teachers or staff is interested in what I am doing. I will extend my services out to help them so that others are on board with what I am doing.

Reflection

I have enjoyed learning how to effectively use technology in the classroom during this course. I have realized how students are so much more engaged while working with technology. I am so excited to teach and guide students to their new learning. I always did believe that students should be doing projects and discovering their own learning but now I have discovered how that is possible in the classroom. I have enjoyed watching my students discovered their learning and their excitement about their learning.

I have already started integrating many of the concepts that we have talked about during this class. I have used bubbl.us to let students show their learning and thinking about the human body. My students have also made voice threads to share books and talk to each other about their favorite books.

My long term goals will be to first begin to integrate more technology across the curriculum within my classroom. I will do this by continuing to use a wiki so students can talk about books and talk about their learning with other students outside my classroom. I will continue to use the tools we have talked about in this class. I will also start asking the students to talk about their math thinking on the wiki. This will be similar to our math journals.

My second goal will be to become a change agent for my school. This will be the most challenging goal. I will need to first show to other teachers that students at all grades can have success while using technology and I will need to show that while students are using technology that they are growing at the same pace or faster then the “old” way. I then will have to show all the teachers how to use the technology themselves so that they will not be afraid to use it with their students. I will look forward to this goal because I believe so highly in it and love teaching others how fun technology can be.

Voice Thread

A new Genre?

www.voicethread.com/share/897530/

I am not sure how to get it to link directly?
Please help?
Amy

Social Learning!!

Social Learning in the Classroom is so exciting! I love it when students are talking with each other and sharing ideas. They are excited and they are learning!! Classrooms are no longer the quite environment that they use to be. They are moving and discussing and learning! My friend and teammate use to tell me to keep in mind this quote while teaching… The one doing the talking is doing the learning! I keep those in mind when I am talking too much in my classroom.
Dr. Orey states the same thing in the video this week. Collaborative learning engages students in construction and conversations that help them learn. They are also learning in their zone of proximal development.
This is so exciting to me because technology fits right into social learning! Technology provides a way for us to communicate together and see each other thinking and a way for us to interact with others thinking. All the new tools on the internet help us talk with each other. Windows live.com, Linkedin.com, Google Reader.com are all ways that we can keep up and talk with each other effectively. My students now understand why it is great to have Google reader so they don’t have to go all over the internet. Also it makes things easier for me so they can get the information without going to several different sites. These kids are 9!!! I can’t even imagine what they will have when they are 30.

Everyone is a teacher and a learner!!

Today, I had my students go on a virtual field trip of the human body and then outline their thinking at bubbl.us, just like we did last week in this class. The result was amazing!! The student on an IEP learned that everyone had lungs, while the student that attends gifted classes learned that the esophagus is part of the digestive system.

Today was a great example between constructionist. As Dr. Orey stated in this weeks video constructionist is based on letting your students BUILD something. I was letting my students explore and build their own web, therefore letting them learn what they wanted to learn about the human body and what their minds were ready to learn. The key to constructionist is TRUST. You must trust your students to learn what you would like them to learn. You must TRUST yourself that you can guide them to learn what they need to learn. You must TRUST yourself that you will let go of the control and let the students go where they want to go.

This type of learning lenses itself very easily to technology because technology lets students build on their own and discover their own thinking and learning. Students can explore web sites and use the online tools to construct their own thinking. I am excited to be a teacher in this day and age because students are growing more and more everyday. I am learning so much from them everyday. Everyone in our class is a teacher and a learner!!

Concept Mapping

I have been introduced to the term concept mapping which reminds me of webbing. This concept puts many of the different parts of the cognitive learning theory into practice. Information processing consists of several different ways we learn. There can be visual information, auditory information, dual coding, picture label, smell, and epic memory. Concept mapping can include many of these learning styles therefore helping the student be very productive. I will be interested in seeing the concept mapping when I use it in my classroom.

Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that works

This past week I have been very interested in the sites that I have explored from the book Using Technology with classroom instruction that works. I have used many of the different sites suggested in chapter 10 Homework and Practice. My class and I have explored brainpop.com and Iknowthat.com and stellarium.org these websites have given us the opportunity to reinforce what we have learned in our unit on space. My classroom is so excited about space but when we were looking at the stellarium.com and using brainpop.com to answer questions with our “clickers” students are developing and reinforcing everything that they are learning.
I am looking forward to introducing my students to the new tools that were also discussed in chapter 10. I have taken several classes on Word and have discovered so many opportunities within word to help students develop their writing. The AutoSummarize tool is so great. I can’t wait to show my students. We are studying about summarizing right now so that will not only help with writing but reading also.
Behaviorism fits into all of these practices. Behaviorist lives on reinforcements. All of the resources give students immediate reinforcement. Today society is orientated to instant gratification and we as teachers use that and feed into that gratification to get the results that we desire from our students.