Final Reflections

Hello Walden Colleagues!

Reflections
Immediate adjustments that I will make to my instructional practices have already been set into motion. My students will be using technology more. That is the bottom line. My change is slow as I think it should be. When I finally launch a full, technology based class that can be accessed by students, parents and community members I want it to be something to be proud of as well as something that everyone will want to come back to. So my long term goals are to continue learning and refining my use of technology as it pertains to education and right now we are using Study Blue (www.studyblue.com). This site is an easy to use space to practice and study what we have learned in class. This in itself further differentiates my instruction.
Other less immediate changes that I am making involve my plans for next year. My vision is very different and though I will use many of my old familiar tools (i.e. the textbook in print form and whiteboard) my thoughts and perspective have been opened up a bit. From one of our first classes here at Walden, I am mindful of the impact of my own history, beliefs and perspectives and how they influence how I teach (Kottler, Zehm and Kottler, 2005). Another shift (obvious but significant) is my new knowledge of the possibilities to be explored using technology and what it can do for differentiating my classes (Smith & Throne, 2009). I am excited that I to be using Study Blue but even more so at the many web 2.0 tools and what they will eventually do for me and my students. Something else that I do now is pay more attention to process, strengths and weaknesses of individual students (Laureate Education, Inc. 2009).
Having a fully DI classroom (Laureate Education, Inc. 2009) is something that will take time but I have made a start. I have enjoyed some great improvements in my Spanish III class. They are all very engaged. I would like to see some of them get more creative and others worry less about what will be easiest for them but, alas I have not trained them and will push but can only expect so much at this point.

References

Kottler, J. A., Zehm, S. J., & Kottler, E. (2005). On being a teacher: The human dimension (3rdrd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Laureate Education, Inc., (Executive Producer). (2009). What is differentiated instruction. [DVD].
Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore, MD.:Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). VFE. [DVD] Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Smith, G., & Throne, S. (2007). Differentiating instruction with technology in K-5 classrooms. Belmont, CA: International Society for Technology in Education. 
 Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

GAME Plan Reflection

I started out skeptical about following a GAME plan. I usually have to create my own tools of organization for them to work for me; and yet here I am having accomplished several goals. It turns out that making learning goals that are relevant to me now, writing them down and then checking back in the monitor and evaluate my progress (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009) has worked beautifully to build on my technology know-how and confidence. I believe that even though this was an assignment completed for a grade it has also become a catalyst for further learning for me in the integration of technology in my classroom.

New learning involved further detailed knowledge in how to handle a wiki and about several other applications that would work in parallel in my instruction using a wiki. Uploading files, importing YouTube videos and slide shows is now easy for me. I have raised my visual intelligence and speed for assessing work that has been done and evaluating the users of a wiki and have observed several different ways to organize the information on a wiki. An excellent support to what I want to accomplish on my wikis is epals and google.docs. These applications will bring more authenticity into student learning. After my current goal is reached, that of creating several digital stories of my own, I am confident of accomplishing even more after this class has ended. My method of teaching is newer and I was having trouble at first finding a way to adapt suggestions from the course resources to my particular style but now I have a clearer picture in my head of how to integrate technology into my curriculum.

As a result of my learning I will be starting my classes on a wiki the second week in January after sharing the GAME plan with them. I hope to get them signed up with an epal by then also but that will depend on who I can find to be our companion classroom. A month ago having my students creat digital story was intimidating because I didn't even know how to make one. Now, even though I have not finished any, I have confidence that I can figure it out so in February I will assign a simple digital story using slide.com. In March, their second digital story will require more and I hope to use photostory if it can be obtained for free on our school computers. If not then I will have my students use PowerPoint.

 

References

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.

 

GAME plan Progress

School is out! Hurray! And the family emergency continues to plague me...

But back to my GAME plan! I think I have figured wiki's out enough to lead a classroom full of students into a collaborative endeavor using one. There are still things I will continue to learn about them I am certain but I now feel comfortable enough to set another goal. I need to create a few digital stories myself. I will not feel comfortable having my students build one unless I can more or less do it myself and therefore do basic troubleshooting for them.

Powerpoint is one of the more common applications/software available that would work for this purpose so I will start with that. I will try to combine the effort with a great Christmas gift for the grandparents. This means that I will have a wonderful subject, my son, and incorporate pictures, video, music and narration. I think if I can get all four of those elements into a story/update about my son I will have mastered the most basic elements of a digital story. Also, burning it onto a DVD and or saving it to a thumbdrive will be another great accomplishment in my GAME plan. Woohoo! Progress in technology education!

I think the process of forming a GAME plan would be very beneficial to students. One of the digital stories I do could be about forming a GAME plan and the NETS-S with my students. Before doing the wiki or the digital story we could go over what the students want to work on. As long as I am modeling and supporting those goals through assignments that involve technology the students will find motivation and enthusiasm to meet the goals they make for themselves.

My GAME plan revisited...

Well, this blog is late due to a family emergency. It's much more work to be absent!

But about my GAME plan, otherwise known as my efforts to learn more about wiki's and integrate them into my instruction. Well, I have learned a little bit more about how to work a wiki but even more about some of the applications that would be wonderful to run in conjunction with the wiki. The idea is of course to get my students excited to use the wiki and motivated to use them (and thus continue learning content) outside of class time. I think Slide (http://www.slide.com/arrange?bc=0&fx=4&tt=24&sk=0&cy=ms&th=0&sc=0) is one such gem that students will have a TON of fun with. After having them write a short entertaining story in Spanish I will just "Let them loose" on this free online application that allows you to upload pictures and write in text students can create nice visual backdrop to their stories! It was so easy that even I was able to make a slide show quick and easy!

Epals is also something I am excited about because of the contact with native speakers that my students would get. I know how invaluable it was for me to travel to another country and get a broader world view and I hope that the experience with epals, possibly in conjunction with a wiki project, would engender some of the same benefits that travel had on me. The NETS T standards will take care of themselved, it seems, as I have my students working with each other and possibly other classrooms using technology.

I still have much more to learn about the wiki and what can go with it so I am not ready to set another goal for myself but I am ready to dive in again soon. In January I will unleash my Spanish 3 class on pbworks and we will see how smoothly I can get it to run. =)

My particular learning style is to get in and work with what I want to learn about so I hope to beable to more of this during the Christmas break. One week till Christmas break! Yay! Merry Christmas everyone!

Further technology know-how...

In trying to advance my GAME plan (and my homework) I have started a wiki page and some of my members have done some great things already! A new cool slide show greets the new viewer and is a great resource to any teacher (Thank you Sherrie)! Further, other comments and questions from my wiki-colleagues have helped me to further my thought processes in regard to how a wiki will work in my classroom. :)

I don't know if I need to make any adjustments to my plan yet. I have much more to learn and I believe the process of making this PBL, using the wiki and continuing to read and discuss is helping me to advance my goals.

GAME Plan progress...

...is slow. I think my "inner mental map" of how data transfer works is a little bit clearer but still lacking. However, I have made great progress on some of my other goals like improving my TPR-S instruction (see blog post below), aligning my lessons with my colleagues' and learning more about what I can do with a wiki. :) Yay me. Managing over 135 wiki pages does pose challenges but can be managed! I am very excited about the possibilities! I need to look up some other great resources! Through my Walden courses I have become acquainted with more great resources than I can learn at once.

The next assignment, involving a wiki, will be very useful in advancing my GAME plan. In a week or so I will have a much better idea about what a wiki can do and, more importantly, how!

My TPR-S Workshop-Blaine Ray-November 13, 2010

TPR-S is a method of teaching a second language that has evolved quite a bit in the last three decades but has proven to improve student fluency and raise test scores of all students by one standard deviation (that is 36%!!!) and is just much more fun than laboring and belaboring grammar and vocabulary lists. The main goal is to get as much comprehensible input in the time that you have in a class as possible. The teacher "asks" a story. This involves the teacher asking a lot of questions, some of which allow students to determine details and direction of the story. The rest if just to review the story and check for understanding and to put add humor. The key is to incorporate tons, tons and tons of repetition. Did I say repetition? Ways of keeping these repetitions interesting enough for the students are to use props, pictures, content that is about the students themselves and student actors.

Problems that I have had with using TPR-S: student not staying in Spanish, boredom (the death knell to all learning!), lots of work for me with little apparent return, department head not on board, difficulty adapting the method to the brand new text book.

At this workshop the necessity of going slow was emphasized. To bring this need into clarity a new language was taught, using this method, and I now know some German! (Es gab ein madchen. Das madchen heist Heidi. Heidi ist eine gutes madchen. Heidi mochte ein grosse kuh. Heidi geht zu Dingdong, TX. In Dingdong Tx es gab ein man. Der man ist Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt hatte drei kuh...All this a week later in two minutes and no previous German!) As I learned this German (one hour by the way) I realized how very slow Blaine was going and how fast it seemed to me.

Another point that was made clear was HOW to maximize repetitions! Frankly getting in 50-125 (range required to convert into long-term memory) repetitions of one word or structure without adding new material is difficult! There are ways to do it. First, after you ask the question, always restate the answer after the students have answered. Second, add another detail (when, where, how and/or why). Third, add in more characters if I have run out of ways to ask, state or reiterate a structure.

A further modification that has proven to get good results is to always, always use student actors and when using student actors: ask the actor the questions so that the change in perspective is demonstrated. A change in tense can also be used. The key is to
Another thing that became glaringly obvious to me is that the teacher is to be 100% in control of the story, class, content and atmosphere; My initial impression of the TPR-S method was that it was very relaxed. Upon further observation, I noticed how very strict the teacher actually was about how everything went, what was said and how it was said. Everyone had fun and was engaged but the atmosphere was very much under his control.

The benefits of TPR-S method are: less paper work, you get more grammar and students will be more fluent.

In one week of TPR-S the first day of the story should be all background, all kinds of details. The second day should be action but first review and add in details that "you forgot" to say yesterday. Again, as many repetitions as possible! As many repetitions as possible!!! You must go very, very slowly. Third day, read! The process will be similar to the story asking. Do rewrites, retells, draw the stories. Timed writes and relaxed writes are next. Quizzes should be as brief and focus on comprehension.