Game Plan Progress

During the past week I have made two primary advances in my game plan. The first involved creating a Problem Based Learning project for my Ecology Unit which incorporates technology, the second involved the observation of an ELMO Document Camera in use in a classroom.

Although ecology is one of the areas of biology that I care about the most, since it is the last unit in my curriculum, it has in the past been probably the least organized, most disjointed, and most rushed unit I have taught. It generally comes down to how many days do I have left to fit this unit into. This is one of the reasons that I chose this unit to focus on building up during my current Walden course. The primary reason I chose to enter the teaching profession is that I believe that in order for us to continue to survive as a species on earth, we need to have an understanding of ecology and how the affect of our actions on the environment can ultimately impact our continued survival. I found it disheartening that I never seemed to have enough time to really be able to teach this properly. Even more disheartening was hearing my students comment that they did not care about learning about ecology because they felt it did not impact them. My hope is that through the problem I provided them to solve and the tasks involved in the PBL project that it will help them realize the importance of ecology and discover how interconnected all organisms and the environment are to each other and how the disappearance of one species can impact other species and find ways in which they can help stop this domino effect. Creating this PBL applies to my GAME plan in that it incorporates technology in a learner centered experience.

Over the past couple of years my school district has started purchasing some ELMO document cameras for classroom use in some classrooms. Last spring they distributed a questionaire to teachers about the devices we had in our classrooms, if we use them, and if we would use them if we had them. They also asked us to provide them with a technology wish list of what equipment we would like for our classrooms (not a guarantee that we would get it, but a tool to help them determine how they might best spend future technology funds for classroom equipment). One of the devices they asked us about was the ELMO. At the time I really did not have much of an idea of exactly what an ELMO was besides a cute, giggly muppet on Sesame Street. For the question, "if you had an ELMO in your classroom would you use it?" I was unable to answer since they only gave us the option of answering "yes" or "no". I found myself wishing I could answer, "maybe I would, if I knew what it was and what it could do". I found myself imagining some bulky, complicated digital camera like contraption attached to a frame to take pictures of items on paper to transfer to a computer. With this in mind I did not think I had a use for it being that I already had a scanner in my classroom. I was more interested in a set of regular digital cameras that my students could use to take photos to upload for inclusion into projects. Today however, I was subbing in a Kindergarten class which has an ELMO. The class aide was teaching many of their lessons using it which allowed me to observe its use. I found that the mental picture I had was incorrect. Rather than scanning and uploading images she was demonstrating to the students how to complete their activity and what she was doing was being projected up on to the screen where they could see it in real time. Somewhat like a transparency projector except it did not require transparent objects or a special marker, she was using the actual objects the students were using and was able to walk them through step by step how to complete their activity. I can think of several ways I could use this in a classroom of my own (demonstrating lab steps for one, including which side of the thermometer to read) and I am sure if I were to have one available in a classroom of my own someday that I could find even more uses for it. Not to mention it was a small, light weight, easy to manuever device.