GAME Plan Resources and progress

My primary resource will be the internet. Through internet sources I can locate acitivities devleoped by many other teachers that I could use as is, adapt, or gain ideas from.

There are also many people within the district who I can consult. I can collaborate with other teachers in the building both who teach in my subject area or use technology tools I am interested in incorporating. My district also generally provides one or two technology training sessions each year in which they bring together all the teachers who teach the same subject area together to focus on learning to use new devices the district has purchased for us and collaborate on activities we can use those devices for in our subject area (last year it was Smartboards, the year before last it was LabQuests). A lot of my teacher resources also have on-line activities and links to various multi-media sources as well as activity ideas. The district also has a technology integration specialist, curriculum specialists and most of the schools have teams of teachers which serve as a technology integration team for the building.

The knowledge and practice I am gaining through my Walden experiences will also provide me with a good working knowledge of many free web tools available and confidence in using them to develop my own activity and lesson ideas.

Given that I am currently not teaching full-time but am substitute teaching instead, my progress towards my game plan has been primarily limited to the knowledge and practice I am gaining through my Walden experiences. Although I have been seeing and using lesson plans created by other teachers. Generally these lesson plans aren't typical because they are plans left for a substitute to follow but the experience is providing me with exposure to some of the activities other teachers are using in different subjects and grade levels including some being used in special education classes and alternative schools. I am also getting to know many different teachers through out the school district who could serve as resources for me.

My GAME Plan

One National Educational Technology Standard for teachers (NETS-T) I would like to improve my confidence and proficiency in is design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments. To do this I will focus on the two performance indicators of design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity, and develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress.

My GAME plan to achieve this is as follows:

Goals
Develop a learner centered classroom experience for my students in which technology tools are utilized to maximize learning and creativity.

Actions
Conduct internet searches to find learner centered activities, use my own creativity and knowledge of technology tools and subject matter to develop my own learner centered activities, and adapt and revise activities I already utilize in my classroom to make them more learner centered and enhance them with technology.

Monitoring
Track how much time I am devoting to teacher centered activities as opposed to student centered activities. Observe how my students are responding to the activities and the technology.

Evaluate and Extend
Determine what activities are working well and where students may be having difficulties. Adjust the activity directions or amount of instruction on the use of the technology tools to further increase student success.



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.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). The ISTE NETS and Performance Indicators for Teachers. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4318222715905215475

Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology Course Reflections

After completing this course my personal learning theory involves a combination of behaviorist, cognitive, constructionist, and social learning theories. I believe they all play a role in learning. Behaviorism is the basis for motivation to learn. For a learner to have a desire to learn it needs to be rewarding to them in some way. Cognitism describes how as new knowledge is gained it is processed and organized into schemas the are developed based on our individual experiences which help us create understanding and meaning out of that knew knowledge. Constructionism is the creation of experiences with the new knowledge and the processing of that knowledge through building artifacts to represent the knowledge. Through these experiences and building processes knowledge is processed in many in depth and meaningful ways that help to make it memorable. Learning through socialism allows the learner to share their ideas about the knowledge and gain other's perspectives on them. Social learning also helps us process and reflect on the knowledge as it pertains to our society and to develop a common knowledge to help us further the collective knowledge of our society.

One change I plan to make to my instructional practices include finding more ways to include constructionism in my classroom. I want to make my classroom more student centered by decreasing the amount of time I am feeding information to my students and increasing the amount of time my students are physically manipulating that information in building that information into projects. One technology tool I learned about in this course that I would like to use for this is the building of concept maps. I would also like to use more virtual lab and field trip experiences than what I currently use to create more complete and meaningful experiences for my students.

To pursue my goal of increasing constructionism in my instruction, I plan to include at least one technology project for every unit I teach. The projects may include putting together power point reports, constructing concept maps, wiki projects, or creating a pod-cast.

To pursue my goal of increasing the number of virtual experiences I provide my students, I plan to use web searches to locate one additional on-line virtual experience each school term for each course I teach.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses and Constructivist/Constructionist Learning

As a science teacher, I am very familiar of the process of generating and testing hypotheses. During this process predictions are made based on prior knowledge, these predictions are then tested and data is gathered and analyzed to determine if the original ideas are supported or not, and these ideas are then modified to accomodate the new knowledge gained.

Generating and testing hypotheses is an example of constructionist learning because knowledge is being built and remodeled. Dr. Orey describes constructionist learning as knowledge being assimilated and accomodated into schemas (Laureate, 2009). Hypotheses are generated based on the knowledge already present in the learner's personal schema. When the hypotheses are tested the new knowledge being gained may or may not fit into the schema and is accomodated by adding to that schema, adjusting that schema, or developing a new schema.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Virtual Field Trips, Concept Maps, and Cognitive Learning Theory

As described by Dr. Orey, cognitive learning theory has to do with how information is processed by and stored in the brain. For learning to occur information has to be taken into short term memory and ingrained into long term memory which requires practice and repetition. Information can be stored in long term memory as declarative information, procedural information, and episodic information. The strongest memories are procedural and episodic. (Laureate, 2009).

Virtual field trips and concept mapping tools are a few tools that can be used to increase learning. They require the learner to use the declarative information they have recieved in procedural and episodic learning rather than just learn it declaratively through repetition. Virtual field trips may not be as good as an actual field trip to experience and interact with the knowledge, but can be very useful when the logistics of taking an actual field trip can not be met. Virtual field trips can allow the learner to actually experience what is going on which applies to episodic learning. Creating concept maps are useful in helping the learner to interconnect the information they are learning thereby increasing the ways the information can be recalled. They also have to think about the information more critically and it becomes intertwined with the procedure of linking it in a concept map.


Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Behavioral Learning Theory

Dr. Orey describes behaviorism as being as certain behaviors being enforced through reward and others being discouraged through punishment (Laureate, 2009). As a teacher I would like my students to be intrinsically motivated by the reward of learning rather extrinsic motivation by being given a grade or prize for completing a learning activity. I have found this challenging as many of my students tend to be concerned about their grade, but not concerned so much about learning the material. It is hard to motivate them to complete an assignment for the learning aspect without awarding points for the assignment and have it contribute directly to their grade.

Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski make the generalization that students do not always realize the importance of effort in learning and recomend teaching this to students. They suggest doing this by having students keep track of the amount of effort they put into learning activities such as taking, organizing, and using class notes, class participation, and homework assignments as well as test scores, and charting the results so that they can see how their effort corresponds with their achievment. (2007).

The strategy of teaching students the importance of effort in their learning correlates with behavioral learning because the students learn that putting effort into the assigned learning activities provides the reward of learning and doing well on the test.


Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Denver, CO: McREL.

Course Reflections

During my participation in Walden's Understanding the Impact of Technology course, I have learned alot about the types of Web 2.0 tools that are available for use in learning and how to use these tools. Blogging, wiki's, and pod-casting were all new things for me that I was able to gain experience with through this course. I have gained enough knowledge and experience with blogging and audio pod-casting that I can stop thinking so much about how to do them, but focus on how to use them with my students to enhance their learning. I gained at least some basic experience with wiki's and though I am still not very comfortable using them, I feel like I have some basics to explore the use of them further on my own.

A few ways in which I feel I can continue to expand my knowledge of technology integration include continuing my education with Walden University as well as doing more exploring on my own. I can work on exploring the use of wiki's further. I am also interested in experimenting with video capabilities and uploading video. I have a digital camera that takes video, but I have not yet tried to upload videos to the computer or to the web. Attempting to do this is one thing I want to try in the very near future.

My first long-term goal after completeing this course includes incorporating blog assignments into my curriculum to encourage critical thinking about the core concepts being taught. I have already taken the first steps in doing this by setting up a class blog page for my biology course and incorporated a blogging assignment into my last unit. I plan on slowly incorporating more blogging assignments into my lesson plans, by creating at least one blogging assignment for each unit. I also plan to create a course blog for Anat/Phys class and begin incorporating blogging assignments with them as well.

My second long-term goal is to explore additional use of web 2.0 tools in my classroom. I plan on spending more time exploring the possibilities of wiki's to see if I could find a way to use them in the future. I want to be able to create some sort of web page that students would be able to upload projects to or create projects on, whether that be through a wiki or through an actual web page, which is another thing I currently have no experience with. I am also interested in incorporating pod-casting into my lessons as well, but before I can do so, I need to do some brainstorming on how I would use the pod-casting for student learning.