After having my students journal via blogging for a week, I have found myself full of excitement. Not only am I getting the results that I envisioned, but the students are more motivated and willing to express themselves more openly via their blogs. When students completed their daily journals with paper and pencil, they held off on their writing. They did what was needed to get by. Now, they are given twenty minutes (instead of ten) to get a response posted in their blog. More time is given for them to navigate and upload images as necessary. Students are more motivated and excited about this experience so they are putting more into it. Students are writing (typing) more than they ever had through their old journals.
My goal of having students utilize digital tools and reflect is being accomplished. Students are becoming familiar with technology that they have yet to be exposed to which is creating a more successful learning experience. My students now have skills that will help them as they progress towards their future careers.
With each blog that students complete, they are following a given prompt that they must reflect on. This prompt is either a reflection of a personal experience, a learning activity being done in the classroom, or their thoughts/opinions on a particular idea.
My upcoming goal is for students to create aggregator accounts where they can follow two of their classmates blogs. They will be required to share a response with at least one member three times a week. This will be a way to share ideas and thoughts with each other through a blogging experience. The only downside to this is students are having to get comfortable with the idea that their journals are now public to the rest of the class, where before only the teacher was required to view the entries. For the most part, students are okay with this idea and are excited about reading and commenting on their peers’ blogs.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress: Week 4
Over the past two weeks, my students and I have been working on the following two goals:
1. Promote student reflection using collaborative, digital tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
2. Strengthen collaboration with students and parents through the use of digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.
These goals were part of my original GAME plan to get students more involved with technology and to communicate more effectively with parents. To do this, I am having student’s complete daily journals that are done through their own personal blog. These blogs are made public so that parents are able to view and comment on them.
For the most part, blogging has been a new concept for my students. We have started with the basics as a whole group and have viewed, commented, and created a blog as a class. This past week, I had students create their own accounts and they have played around with the styles and options on their blog site. After the Thanksgiving holiday, students will make their first online journal post. I will be sending home a hard copy of a newsletter and an electronic copy letting parents know of the change in our daily journaling exercises. Parents will become aware of their child’s URL address and will be encouraged to read and comment on their posts.
Students are quick to adjust to change. I have found that they are very eager to learn about new technologies and find it much more exciting than doing journals by hand. I hope that this excitement carries over to other areas of the curriculum as I plan to continue to integrate more and more types of technologies. There have been many questions and I thank the students for their patience and persistence in discovering the blogging process.
It is my hope that after a week’s worth of blogging, I will have students complete a survey that gives me a glimpse at their thoughts on completing their journals electronically or by hand. After students get used to this process, I hope that they will begin to feel more comfortable with the technology and begin to tune into their creative side, adding more images, changing font styles, and commenting on each of their classmate’s posts.
1. Promote student reflection using collaborative, digital tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
2. Strengthen collaboration with students and parents through the use of digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.
These goals were part of my original GAME plan to get students more involved with technology and to communicate more effectively with parents. To do this, I am having student’s complete daily journals that are done through their own personal blog. These blogs are made public so that parents are able to view and comment on them.
For the most part, blogging has been a new concept for my students. We have started with the basics as a whole group and have viewed, commented, and created a blog as a class. This past week, I had students create their own accounts and they have played around with the styles and options on their blog site. After the Thanksgiving holiday, students will make their first online journal post. I will be sending home a hard copy of a newsletter and an electronic copy letting parents know of the change in our daily journaling exercises. Parents will become aware of their child’s URL address and will be encouraged to read and comment on their posts.
Students are quick to adjust to change. I have found that they are very eager to learn about new technologies and find it much more exciting than doing journals by hand. I hope that this excitement carries over to other areas of the curriculum as I plan to continue to integrate more and more types of technologies. There have been many questions and I thank the students for their patience and persistence in discovering the blogging process.
It is my hope that after a week’s worth of blogging, I will have students complete a survey that gives me a glimpse at their thoughts on completing their journals electronically or by hand. After students get used to this process, I hope that they will begin to feel more comfortable with the technology and begin to tune into their creative side, adding more images, changing font styles, and commenting on each of their classmate’s posts.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Carrying Out My GAME Plan: Week 3
Resources:
In order to carry out my GAME plan, I will need to develop surveys for students to complete after they have completed a week’s worth of journal entries. This will allow me to get a feel for the students overall attitude with completing electronic journals versus handwritten journals. The surveys will be completed by the use of clickers where students will be able to respond anonymously. I would also like to find blog entries that are similar to the project my class will be working on. This will give the students a better feel for the assignment and ways to express their creative side.
Additional Info:
A criterion sheet should be created that the students will follow while posting to their blogs on a daily basis. The sheet will be turned in at the end of the week and will act as a check sheet for each student. There must be a total of five blog postings that follow the grammatical expectations for 2nd grade. There will also be a requirement of at least two pictures/images that they imported to a posting(s).
Steps Taken:
Thus far, I have been able to introduce the idea of blogging to my students. We have looked at the blog site they will use to create and post to. The students are becoming familiar with how to use the site through the use of an example blog and its posts. My upcoming steps are to have each student create their own blog and have it ready to post to when we come back from Thanksgiving.
In order to carry out my GAME plan, I will need to develop surveys for students to complete after they have completed a week’s worth of journal entries. This will allow me to get a feel for the students overall attitude with completing electronic journals versus handwritten journals. The surveys will be completed by the use of clickers where students will be able to respond anonymously. I would also like to find blog entries that are similar to the project my class will be working on. This will give the students a better feel for the assignment and ways to express their creative side.
Additional Info:
A criterion sheet should be created that the students will follow while posting to their blogs on a daily basis. The sheet will be turned in at the end of the week and will act as a check sheet for each student. There must be a total of five blog postings that follow the grammatical expectations for 2nd grade. There will also be a requirement of at least two pictures/images that they imported to a posting(s).
Steps Taken:
Thus far, I have been able to introduce the idea of blogging to my students. We have looked at the blog site they will use to create and post to. The students are becoming familiar with how to use the site through the use of an example blog and its posts. My upcoming steps are to have each student create their own blog and have it ready to post to when we come back from Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Game Plan: Week 2
My Personal GAME Plan
G: Set Goals
A: Take Action
M: Monitor
E: Evaluate and Extend
After looking over the NETS-T (National Education Standards for Teachers), I have chosen two indicators I would like to work to improve proficiency and confidence with.
NETS-T Indicators:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society.
Set Goals:
1. Promote student reflection using collaborative, digital tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
2. Strengthen collaboration with students and parents through the use of digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.
Take Action:
1. Students will be required to write in journals using the computers, rather then a paper notebook.
2. Students will communicate ideas, opinions, and suggestions through a collaborative classroom wiki page.
3. Through the class wiki page, students and parents will be able to access support and ideas to help students at home by keeping a weekly agenda of what is going on in the classroom.
4. Parents with access to the Internet will be sent resources to help their child via electronic sites, journals, or activities.
Monitor:
To monitor my progress, I will have students complete an anonymous survey with the use of clickers. Students will answer questions related to the classroom wiki page as well as their daily electronic journals. I will also monitor the class site for parent comments.
I will assess student learning through formative assessments that students will complete twice a week.
Evaluate and Extend:
As a whole class, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of completing journals via the computer. We will also discuss the wiki page and offer suggestions for improvements. Students will have an opportunity to voice their opinion and work closely with the technology to make necessary changes or improvements.
Collaboration will take place with other professionals who employ this form of technology in the classroom to get their opinion on student successes and failures.
Reference:
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.
G: Set Goals
A: Take Action
M: Monitor
E: Evaluate and Extend
After looking over the NETS-T (National Education Standards for Teachers), I have chosen two indicators I would like to work to improve proficiency and confidence with.
NETS-T Indicators:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society.
Set Goals:
1. Promote student reflection using collaborative, digital tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
2. Strengthen collaboration with students and parents through the use of digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.
Take Action:
1. Students will be required to write in journals using the computers, rather then a paper notebook.
2. Students will communicate ideas, opinions, and suggestions through a collaborative classroom wiki page.
3. Through the class wiki page, students and parents will be able to access support and ideas to help students at home by keeping a weekly agenda of what is going on in the classroom.
4. Parents with access to the Internet will be sent resources to help their child via electronic sites, journals, or activities.
Monitor:
To monitor my progress, I will have students complete an anonymous survey with the use of clickers. Students will answer questions related to the classroom wiki page as well as their daily electronic journals. I will also monitor the class site for parent comments.
I will assess student learning through formative assessments that students will complete twice a week.
Evaluate and Extend:
As a whole class, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of completing journals via the computer. We will also discuss the wiki page and offer suggestions for improvements. Students will have an opportunity to voice their opinion and work closely with the technology to make necessary changes or improvements.
Collaboration will take place with other professionals who employ this form of technology in the classroom to get their opinion on student successes and failures.
Reference:
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.
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