EDUC 6713 Reflection

The GAME plan I chose to pursue during my current course (EDUC 6713) is focused on achieving Indicator 2c of the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS●T). The goal of this standard is to “customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources.” As a result of this plan I have been able to identify the individual needs of many of my students but, as mentioned in Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer’s (2009) book Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use, I will need to discover and monitor the needs of many of my students throughout the year. By observing my students’ weekly posts on their blog, I have already been able to make the appropriate adjustments to their individual learning goals and modify my instruction for them. As we continue to make these adjustments my students will certainly benefit from a more individualized approach to learning.

As this GAME plan continues to take shape, I plan to seek out more helpful technology to make my students feel more comfortable and be successful in my class. Some things that I have already integrated are the use of advanced features in word-processing software. Instead of just giving each of my students the same document to record their answers to inquiry activities, I have been able to create customized answer spaces as well as highlight and underline key information, as necessary. The editing features of Microsoft Word have also allowed me to provide useful and easy-to-understand feedback for my students. Something I plan to do in the future with Microsoft Word is to create toggle keys to pair with sounds in order to accommodate certain students (Cennamo et al., 2009). I also plan to continue seeking out new technologies to help support and engage all of my students.

While the use of advanced features of technology will help to individualize my instruction, the use of problem-based learning (PBL) will certainly make our lessons more engaging. In Ertmer and Simons’ (2006) article titled Jumping the PBL Implementation Hurdle: Supporting the Efforts of K-12 Teachers, the goals of PBL are “1) to promote deep understanding of subject matter content while 2) simultaneously developing students’ higher-order thinking.” In the past, many of my lessons have not done this and I believe that integrating PBL will provide a platform to make these improvements. To make it happen, I plan to pursue my other GAME plan, mentioned in a previous post, and identify authentic problems in our community. To solve these problems, I will do my best to determine the content standards that we can thread into them and make learning more meaningful to my students.

During this course we have learned about some great uses of technology, including social networking and digital storytelling. My students are already familiar with these tools as we have used Schoology as a platform for accessing assignments and discussions, as well as sharing with their classmates and providing feedback to each other. At the same time, they are building their digital citizenship skills to help them be successful when social networking in their personal lives. Through online collaboration and demonstrating their understanding with digital stories and other products, my students will certainly gain a much deeper understanding of science than ever before.

Sources:

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.

Ertmer, P., & Simons, K. (2006). Jumping the PBL implementation hurdle: Supporting the efforts of K–12 teachers. The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 1(1), 40–54. Retrieved fromhttp://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=ijpbl.

This Post Will Self-Destruct in Five Seconds

A couple of weeks ago, I was one of a handful of teachers to receive a tour of our local Alcoa plant. The purpose of our visit was to simulate a tour that some of our students will receive later this month and to provide feedback to the Alcoa employees to help make improvements. During the tour, a couple of issues arose that I believe we could easily eliminate. I also believe that we could anchor the visit with a problem-based scenario to help offer the most engaging experience to our students.

As I sat in the minivan cruising through the plant with three Alcoa employees, I did my best to offer some educational humor while also being productive. I began to think about how the students, who will be taking the tour, would be picked up from school to get to Alcoa. With the movie “Old School” coming to mind, I offered the idea of flying around town in a van and throwing the kids in the back. I am pretty sure I managed to get a laugh out of them.

The more I thought about it, something similar to “Mission Impossible” seemed a bit more realistic and could really hook the students into the event. Imagine this; once all of the students are in the van outside of their school, a video will begin to play that will introduce a problem-situation which will already be occurring at the Alcoa plant. As they complete their ten-minute drive, the students will be briefed on the situation and their mission will begin. Upon a successful completion of the mission, the students will participate in a company meeting in a board room at Alcoa. To demonstrate their learning, the students will be assigned roles to play in the meeting, such as an EPA official.

The plan proposed by Alcoa employees was to begin the tour at Alcoa by giving a brief introduction to all of the students with a slideshow presentation, then send them out to the three different sites to begin the rotation. If we can brief the students on their drive to the plant or, possibly, in a video-conference involving all of the students, teachers, and Alcoa employees prior to their visit, then we could maximize the quality of the time that the students spend at the Alcoa plant. We could even spend a great deal of time up front communicating between Alcoa and our schools, to better prepare our students and help build relationships prior to the visit. One main issue identified in our teacher tour was how to increase the quality of interaction between the students and Alcoa employees. I believe that some communication up-front along with smaller groups during the visit will offer more quality time during the visit and will help eliminate this issue completely.

The other main issue we identified in the teacher tour was transportation. The plant is unfriendly to tour groups, so the less driving we have to do will help with this. When the students reach Alcoa, we will help resolve the transportation issue by taking them directly to their problem-site. We could further resolve this issue by restructuring the activities at the problem-sites. The original tour has the students rotating among the three different sites, each of which require about a five-minute drive and time for transitions. If we could have each group of students visit only one of the sites, this would allow them to spend more time with an expert from Alcoa and gain a deeper understanding from their experience. Of course, they will be required to share their learning with a student from each of the other groups and learn from them, as well, in order to help solve the problem and create a great presentation.

Regardless of how the student tour is structured, it will be a great event! Alcoa has some amazing features in their plant and some really great people to show them to us. However, if we want to offer our students an experience they will never forget, then taking a problem-based approach will be a great choice. By preparing up front, building relationships with experts, maximizing their depth of knowledge, collaborating with peers, and presenting their learning to an authentic audience, this event could be the beginning of a future full of great opportunities for our local children.