Online Learning K-12

Part One:

http://screencast.com/t/ZjlkZTZkZjUt

Part Two:

/Users/terradavis/Desktop/video 2.swf

UDL/DI Reflection

Being able to incorporate elements of differentiated instruction and universal design for learning are great and necessary strategies for every teacher in today's classroom. After completing this course and looking back at what I have learned, I can say that in my three years of teaching I have been doing a decent job of using DI in my teaching. I have a diverse classroom with ELL, TAG, and IEP students all in the same room where it is impossible not to differentiate instruction. Universal Design for Learning was a new theory to me 8 weeks ago. I understand its principles and see the positives of it in the classroom, but had a difficult time fully grasping its context and applying it to my everyday teaching. As this course progressed, it became more clear to full effects of it and how to use UDL in the classroom, but I can honestly say it will be a challenge to see its everyday uses.

However, the ability to use technology can enhance a teacher's ability to reach and engage every student in a classroom. I like what Dr. Tomlinson mentions that a teacher, in order to differentiate instruction, does not have to create a lesson plan for each of their student. They can place their students in similar learning ability "zones" and differentiate their instruction. For teacher's to understand that DI does not have to be more work, they can start applying it to their daily lessons. Out of the nine courses that I have completed during this program, I would say that this has been my most difficult to grasp. I have had a great time completing most of the assignments in all other classes, but I found just about every application difficult to complete. I hope it is just because the program is winding down and I am getting burnt out and I think now that I am starting my final course, I will quickly regain that enthusiasm that I have had for such a long time during my time with Walden. We shall see!

Final Reflection

This course taught me many great ways to integrate technology into my classroom. As a teacher who is just starting out with the integration part, I feel as though the GAME plan idea really put things in perspective. Having goals set out in the beginning allowed me to go back and make sure that what I was doing was following the GAME plan. As most of us in this cohort, we are on summer break now and will not see our students until the fall. However, during the break, I can and will use this time to plan for how I will better implement my GAME plan into my classroom teachings next year.

Being a Social Studies teacher, there are numerous ways to integrate technology into the classroom. There are many historical events that have websites that are interactive for the classroom. A few that I have already have lined up for next year to use in my classroom are an "Attack on Pearl Harbor" website and a "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" website that has many ways for students to become interactive with the material. These examples are just a fraction of what is available out there for teachers like me that understand the importance to get our students involved in using technology; and then also using it to help them learn is even better! I look forward to next school year and having the ability to use technology in my content area.

Week 7 GAME Plan Update

One of my main goals as a high school teacher is to educate my students on how to be most responsible when it comes to using computers, cell phones and the internet in a productive and responsible manner. Throughout the school year, even before taking this specific course, I felt it was my responsibility to inform my students of issues happening around the nation when it came to cyber-bullying, indecent exposure incidents with teenagers and the consequences that they can face if they decide to get involved in this stuff. When we had to create a GAME plan that allows us to look at technology and how we can show our students to use in a positive way, all of these areas that I have been working so hard to educate my students in became reinforced. 

Now that this school year is over, I will work over the summer to find ways for next year on how I can best model and implement digital citizenship onto my students. I think if I can first get them to realized that the internet is not just for social networking and YouTube that will be a good place to start. Then, I will work at having them see the consequences of stealing music, movies and television shows through the internet and that real people can get into real trouble with the law. I am also going to work a lot harder at using technology and all of these amazing teaching tools that we have learned throughout this program into my curriculum. I feel as though the students deserve to have a teacher who cares about their future and understands that technology and knowing how to use it will benefit them as they grow up. 

Update on GAME Plan

These past few weeks since we have established our GAME plan, I have been trying to work on my goals. It has been very difficult because we are winding down in the school year. So to try new things is not easy as we are taking our final tests and cleaning out our lockers. However, I have been able to model and promote digital citizenship to my students. One of the aspects of promoting and modeling digital citizenship is "develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital age communication and collaboration tools."

Me and a fellow colleague of mine are working to create a nation wide discussion forum much like what we saw in this weeks DVD resource where Vicki Davis invited other teachers to discuss certain topcis through the web. In my wildest dreams, I would imagine this process looking much like those CISCO commercials on television where the classroom is equipped with a 70 inch flat screen t.v. and the picture is crystal clear, but it probably will not end up looking like that. We have sent out some emails to teachers in the southern part of the United States (Lousianan, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida) in hopes of letting our students who are in a remote part of eastern Oregon learn how those students who are their same age are dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of my students do not get to experience life outside of our small town and I believe that opening up their eyes to fellow Americans across the country will allow them to become more aware of their lives. While we have began sending out invitations to other schools, I am not too hopeful that this will work. I will let you all know my progress as we move on throughout the Summer.

Evaluating my GAME plan progress....

It is getting a lot more difficult to practice my goals as the school year winds down. We only have a few more days to go and this last week I am not doing any new lessons where I could truly implement my GAME plan. My freshman and I are covering current issues that are occurring around the world right now. For example, The oil spill, The War in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Arizona Immigration Bill and North and South Korea. I teach Freshman World History and I purposely chose the last week of school to be designed to make these global issues aware to my students who live in a rural eastern Oregon town where they do not get to see much of the world.

I have been able to, however, use many different types of technology to show my students what is happening around the world. Normally, I will find some video clips and piece them together and show the students through the data projector. I will use Google earth to show them relative location of the event that we are discussing. So I am still able to practice my goal of demonstrating digital citizenship to my students. Many of them only use the internet for Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. They have no idea that there are thousands of uses for the internet besides these three sites. No kidding, I have had more than one student tell me they have to check out a textbook, instead of use our handy online textbook, because when they get online, they get too distracted by their social networking websites and cannot focus. Talk about getting your priorities straight!

So even though the school year is coming to an end and summer break (which sounds so nice right about now) is approaching it is not easy to practice some of technology goals in the classroom. However, with educating my students on current global issues, I am able to use many parts of the internet to research and find forms of media that can enhance their learning. Some of the things that I have learned in the past few weeks is that what we do as teachers is important. Our students look up to us no matter if they like you or hate. We have influence over our students with everything that we do. So for me, to model digital citizenship to my students and show them that this type of technology can have a great effect on their lives besides just downloading music and movies, IMing their friends and posting pictures on their pages is rewarding. Often times I think there is so much more I could be doing to assist my students, but I have to realize that even just simple conversations with students about their weekends or activities they are involved in are valuable moments with them.

I will continue to push for integrating technology into my classrooms. I have spoken with one of our administrators and mentioned to her that I am finishing up my Master's Degree in my current field. She was so excited that she has signed me up to teach a class to my fellow teachers in one of our teacher in-service days next year. I am very excited about this opportunity and hope that many of my colleagues will benefit from my experience here at Walden.

Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

I believe that I have all of the tools necessary to implement my GAME plan into my classroom. I have nearly all of the technology tools that I want to instruct with. I have a classroom set of text-capable Clickers. I have the easy-to-use software where I can have the students demonstrate their knowledge of the content through many different forms. The only thing I am missing that I would love to have in my classroom would be a Smartboard. As of right now, I believe that I may be receiving one over the summer which would allow me the ability to put it to good use when school starts back up in the fall.

I have learned quite a few things over the course of this program and one of the main things is that technology should not be used as a novelty in the classroom. It should have a clear and precise purpose. Dr. John Ross mentions this and I truly believe that just because a school is equipped with the most up to date forms of technology does not mean that the teachers are using it correctly. I believe that I use technology in the correct way. I want to model to my students that technology is not only used for stealing music and movies or talking to your friends online. It can be a place of limit-less opportunities. For those students who do not have access to computers or the internet, I want to open their eyes to opportunities that can present themselves with the use of technology.

The questions I would ask to my fellow colleagues would be: How is your GAME plan coming along? Have you found it difficult to start implementing it into your daily lessons and classroom activities? Is it easier to reach your goals if you teach primary or secondary level students?

I typed in "technology" into the Google bar and then clicked "Images" and this was the first picture to show up. Thought I would share that with you all

Carrying Out My Personal GAME Plan

To review, my two goals that I chose are:

1. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning

2. Promote and Modeling Digital Citizenship Responsibly

The resources that I will need in order to assist me carry out these goals are going to be information and data that shows just how crucial the ability to use technology as second nature is going to be for my students. I need to make sure they realize that their Basic Computer Skills is suppose to help them become more secure with computers and how they operate. The tools that I will need in order to "Model Digital-Age Work and Learning" are going to be access to the internet and a data projector which I already have in my classroom. I am in the process of taking a class that will allow me the option to have an interactive white board placed in my room. These white boards give teachers many more options to have the kids becoming interactive with the material than simple data projectors can. I am also able to use Clickers that allow for immediate responses from the students to check for understanding. These are not forms of technology that I wish to have...I currently can possess all of these different technologies and implement by the beginning of next year!

Promoting and modeling digital citizenship is important for teachers who deal with teenagers on a daily basis like myself. I just read a report done by the Pew Research Center on teenagers and cell phones ( http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens-cell-phones-text-messages) that states nearly 3/4 teens own a cell phone. It is out responsibility as their educators to make sure they realize how important it is to use these devices in a safe manor. Texting and talking while driving is so dangerous that many states have passed laws to make it illegal to do so. Also, sending out illegal material through cell phones and computers is a recurring part of our everyday lives. To make available information on incidents that are happening around the nation of teenagers much like the ones I have in my classroom, I can make these illegal acts seem more real to them. I guess what I would need from my fellow colleagues in this program would be of information on what they are doing technology-wise in their classrooms and how they implement it with their students. Also, I would like to know if their schools teach digital citizenship to their students? If so, does it work and how do they go about portraying that information to their students?

Developing My Personal GAME Plan

While I still consider myself a "newer" teacher as I finish up my third year of teaching, there are still many parts of my teaching that I want to fix and make more engaging for the students. I pride myself on being a strong advocate for integrating technology into the classroom and making it available to my students, but I know that I could be doing a better job of actually implementing technology into my everyday classroom. The two indicators from the NETS-T standards that I would personally like to strengthen my confidence in are :
1. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning

2. Promote and Modeling Digital Citizenship Responsibly.

In order for me to put these two standards into place I need to create a GAME plan that will give me the steps I need to take in order to make this a reality.

Goals

1. My goals for strengthening these two standards are to become more understanding of the different forms of technology available to educators and students in the classroom. There is a large market for technology tools that are designed specifically for the school setting. If I can model new forms of technology in my classroom to my students, than they will understand that this is a part of their future as a student and also as a working adult.

2. Most teenagers do not understand the dangers of capturing sensitive material on their cell phones or computers. Students take pictures and videos that are considered illegal in the United States everyday and do not know that what they are doing is considered a criminal act. Also, the ease at which forms of media (television shows, feature-length films and music) can be pirated off the internet and used for personal use or profit is a form of theft. People do these illegal acts all of the time and do not think they can get into trouble by doing it. I can teach my students the facts about these topics and move them to change their digital behaviors than I can hopefully prevent them from getting into trouble with the law.

Actions

1. By introducing new forms of educational technology into the classroom and making computers, internet, Clickers and different software programs a part of my classroom, students will begin to become very familiar with it. If I only choose to implement technology on a rare occasion than the students will not begin to have a strong understanding of computers the internet, etc.

2. By showing my students the consequences of using technology for illegal activities they will be able to see for themselves what could happen to them if they participate in unlawful acts through the use of technology. I believe that by showing them to faces of people just like them who have been caught doing illegal acts through the internet will make it a reality to them the stealing movies and music and sending illegal images or video of themselves through their cell phones or email can actually get them into some real trouble.

Monitor

1. By having my students create projects or presentations through the use of
2. Since I cannot actually monitor my students email, cell phone usage, Facebook or Myspace pages, I will have to count on their honesty when talking to them about their online behavior. I would have them create a blog or some other of online writing format where they can write about their actions online. Maybe keep a log entry of where they spend their time surfing the web and what type of activities they do online. I would trust that they are telling the truth and other students of my could help hold one another accountable.

Reflection on New Literacies

I have been teaching for almost three years now and feel that I have done an adequate job of integrating technology into my classroom. I expose my students to computers, the internet and software programs that allow them to produce projects for my class. However, this class has opened my eyes to a few things that I would like to share. Just because you have your students get on computers and research stuff that you are covering in class and then present their information in some way does not mean that they are getting the full effect of technology. Having the ability to come up with questions, search for answers, synthesize and communicate the information they have gathered is a great skill to have. I have not been asking my students to be doing this type of work so far. The other things that I have began to realize the importance of due to this class is how easy it is to find information online and not give credit to those people who created that information. I will need to model this type of behavior much better in the future for my students.

Professional development goals that I have for the future are to do a more in depth inquiry-based project at least one a year with my students. The skills that they use during these projects are the skills that they are going to need to possess for the 21st century workplace. If we as teachers do not stretch their minds and do not let them settle for complacency, than we can have them ready for whatever comes their way in the future. Not all teachers will follow these same guidelines and it will hurt the students in the long run, but if a few teachers at each school can take it upon themselves to integrate real life skills for their students than they will all be better off for it.



Aaron Davis