The first step in overcoming an obstacle is admitting that you have a problem in front of you. My biggest problem right now is that I don’t know my students or my curriculum for next year. This makes planning out some of the aspects of my GAME plan a little difficult right now. Part of the issue is that I need to pay for the online classroom that I am going to be using but I don’t personally have the money to do that right now and won’t have access to my funds until later this month. So, what is a guy to do? Well, I have been leveraging the technology that I do have available to beginning planning out some of the elements that I know I will want to bring into the class regardless of the content I am teaching. I have created a Facebook group for each of my classes to provide a social networking aspect to the class, created online dropboxes on sites like Drop.io. Begun growing my personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter (my name is wybrasr for anyone interested). Set up a Diigo group for my colleagues to share links to professional development sites or technology tools. I have researched some assistive technologies. I have created accounts on Teachertube, Podbean, webs.com (which will be used for student portfolios), set up my iDisk for different classes, and thought about how to use blogs in class.
I still need to work on ways to use videoconferencing software to engage experts, find the time to create multiple formats of my lessons, and gather a list of external sources to use as a model for my students when I am showing them how to use search engines and databases for research. All of this is an attempt to do the kind of lesson planning described by Howard (2004) and just like Howard I am finding that it is time consuming. I am not sure where the return on investment tipping point is, but I am thinking about it more and more. I agree that we should engage each student at his or her level and take into account his or her preferences (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009), but at the same time I wonder in some ways about what this means for education. In order to allow students the freedom to engage with content in a meaningful way there has to be a model for them to follow and what I am doing right now is trying to determine what that model will look like in my classroom.
I wouldn’t call that a problem, but an opportunity to expand my thinking.
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate
Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Howard, K. (2004). Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Needs of All Students. In the Curriculum--Multidisciplinary. Learning & Leading with Technology, 31(5), 26-29. Retrieved from ERIC database.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI'm in the same boat as you. Without students, it's difficult to move forward with our GAME plans. But I like the stance you have taken towards all of this. You're right that our students will need a model to follow if we're going to give them so many options, but like you said, it's not a problem. It's an opportunity.
Thanks for sharing your links, especially Podbean and Drop.io. I was not familiar with either, but I'm glad I was exposed to them! Congrats on getting all of that set up and getting a jump start on your plan.
Erin
Sean-
ReplyDeleteI wish I could teach in your school. It would be so fun to collaborate because you have so many ideas. I too, am feeling overwhelmed with trying to find a way to do all of this planning to engage my students. I am curious to see how your colleagues utilize the resources you are making available to them. You have done a ton of work and I hope it pays dividends in the coming school year.
Sean,
ReplyDeleteI think it is really cool that you are able to create a Facebook group for your students. My district is having problems with that one. They just recently allowed teachers to bypass the firewall by giving us a username and password. Of course when we do bypass the firewall, it is logged at the Technology department. I guess they just can't trust us 100% yet.
Erika
Thanks for the comments everyone. These are some pretty cool sites, but I haven't had the chance to use all of them with students yet. I am looking forward to it though.
ReplyDelete@ Erika - They won't let me use it at school. Social networking is the devil or something like that. Some of my fellow teachers and I have decided to go rogue though and try to meet the students where they operate. We'll see how it goes. I will update my blog with information on it when students are actually exposed to giving it a try.
Cheers all!
Sean,
ReplyDeleteEven though you don't feel fully up and running, it really seems like you have taken control of your plan. Your post made me realize an idea I had in the past. I would like to create a chart that combines all possible activities I could use in my classroom to teach content with all the technologies I understand. I could take a topic each day and use my chart to pick the teaching method and technology. I have trouble mixing it up to keep kids interested. Judging by your post, you seem to have the ideas covered. Thanks for the links!
Chris
Hi Sean,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it a little difficult to implement and monitor a GAME plan without students. You have a lot of great ideas to collaborate with students and colleagues. We have a filter in our district that blocks sites like facebook and twitter. I think it great that your school district understand what a powerful tool technology can be for you and your students.
Greg-