GAME Plan Progress

My progress thus far with my GAME Plan is going well. I have begun to find technology experts to learn technology and how I can implement it in my classroom. Additionally, once I learn the technology, I have garnered interest from a few other teachers who would also like to implement new technologies in their classrooms.

Currently, I am finding difficulty because many websites are blocked or banned at school. When at home, I'm finding some but want to find more but am seeking better results. As of now, my plan seems solid and attainable. For the moment, no changes are necessary. I seem to be getting good feedback from other teachers and hopefully I will be able to deliver in the near future. I have learned that finding new educational technologies can be challenging and some teachers are extremely non-receptive to learning new technologies to implement in their classroom. Hopefully, I will be able to overcome these barriers and totally implement my GAME Plan. A new question that has arisen is what is the most efficient way to find new avenues of technological support and what is the best way to approach teachers who are weary of new technology and implementing it in their classroom.

Jonathan Garrett

Resources I Need to Carry Out my GAME Plan

Some resources I will need to carry out my GAME plan are access to new technologies, experts, and collegues. The access to new technologies will allow me to work with emerging technologies on a daily basis so that I feel comfortable with them and teaching them. Access to experts will give me the knowledge of how to work the emerging technologies so that I may learn how to use them much quicker and become more proficient. Access to my collegues will allow me to instruct them how to implement them in their classrooms so I can pass on my newly gained knowledge. The learning strategy I will use to carry out my GAME plan is using multiple media, providing multiple examples, and including activities with varied levels of difficulty. These strategies will help me learn how to use these technologies quicker and more comepelety and allow the teachers I work with to quickly improve their use of these technologies.

So far I have been able to research new technologies that are used in the classroom. Next I am hoping to find places to learn to use this new technology completely. Hopefully I will be able to quickly implement my GAME plan and get my school using the new technologies in all of our classes and improve our student learning.

Jonathan Garrett

NETS for Teachers and my GAME plan

The two NETS standards that I feel less confident about are “model digital age work and learning”, and “engage in professional growth and leadership.” To become more confident in these two standards I have developed a GAME plan. First I set goals to become more familiar with new technologies and to become more involved in sharing information about new technologies with other teachers. The second part of my GAME is to attend professional learning conferences and events that inform teachers on new technologies and how to implement them in the classroom. I also will set up opportunities at my school to inform other teachers about this new technology and show them how to use it in class. I will monitor my progress by making sure that I am proficient in new technologies and using them in my classroom on a daily basis. Also, I must have many different times when I can teach about the new technologies I have learned. I will evaluate and extend my learning by talking with other teachers who use these technologies and are responsible for teaching others about them. This should prove helpful in me meeting my goals with the NETS for teachers.

Jonathan Garrett

Personal Theory of Learning

This course has helped greatly shape and change my personal learning theory for my students. The implementation of constructionism should greatly help my students learn concepts and retain the important information that they need to be successful. When students have a working knowledge of a topic they retain the information much better. Having students work together and communicate and interact they also better understand the information they have received.

Some adjustments I must make to effectively impact my studesnts are the use of non-linguistic representations and informational organizers. The use of summarizing strategies using non-linguistic approaches and organizers will be beneficial for students and greatly help them. To implement these strategies with technology I will use tool likes Microsoft Word to complete these instructional strategies. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski show us that students saw great success using both the principle pattern summarizer and cause-effect pattern organizer(Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. 2007). The assignment I want to incorporate with the first technological instructional strategy is the passing of a bill into a law. I will teach the process prior to the assignment and then place the students into groups. This will add to the social learning aspect that students need to help them learn through interactions. We know that students are better able to create principle organizers to effectively describe their understanding because of they are more familiar with the topic (2007). The students will be able to graphically describe the concept using an organizational chart in Microsoft Word. The second idea I want to incorporate in the classroom to implement the instructional strategies is a cause and effect technological assignment. Here I want to use Microsoft’s Cause-Effect pattern organizers and small groups to complete this instructional strategy. The students will get into groups to create step-by-step organizers of a the election of the President from the primaries to the actual election. These strategies will allow students to see what they are thinking and can both be completed with non-linguistic symbols.

Two long-term goals I would like to achieve regarding technology integration in my classroom are to let student to build knowledge through the use of technological graphic organizers and to present more student-created activities in my classroom. Students can construct knowledge much more effectively when they are able to create an artifact using technology. I also would like to allow my students to research information for themselves instead of me giving them all of the information that they need. This will allow my students to retain more information and help other students understand the information better. I firmly believe that these strategies will improve my teaching and allow my students to master all of the skills that they need.

Jonathan Garrett

Resources:

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/1041525/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

I think a majority of students construct meaning through social learning but a smaller number of students prefer different methods. A vast number of students learn more effectively when they are allowed to use collaborative practices because they are able to interact with other students and share ideas (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007, p. 139). I implement this practice about once a week in my classroom and have seen students succeed in collaborative activities where they may have failed in other activities. I have also seen some students who prefer to work by themselves and do quite well. Social learning is of the utmost importance but I believe that everyone is different so not everyone constructs the same meaning through social learning.

Implications of adopting social learning instructional practices and integrating technology tools that support and facilitate social learning are very great. By implementing these practices, educators are allowed to reach more students and allow all of them to learn interactively. Most of our students are very familiar and comfortable with technology so using it in various ways should also help students retain information better and make the learning process more relevant. Some technologies that has helped me facilitate social learning in my classroom are wikispaces, blogs, and podcasts. The students seem to enjoy these activities more and therefore retain more of the content.

Jonathan Garrett

Resources:

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Constructionism Strategies

Dr. Michael Orey did an excellent job in illustrating effective constructional learning strategies inside the classroom. The construction of a picture or idea in our minds is the basic notion behind constructionist beliefs. Students working with materials and an idea in order to achieve an end goal constitutes basic constructionism practices (Laureate, 2009). Dr. Orey also discussed that the work of Piaget was a predecessor to modern constructivist ideas and that students must be involved in building ideas in order to learn and build from knowledge. Technology plays an important role in this approach because so many programs, such as PowerPoint, require students to work with a topic and slowly build and create a final product. With the physical construction students are mentally constructing ideas and notions about the topic. Seymour Papert purported the more involvement with an idea, the more building of knowledge (Laureate, 2009). Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn and Malenoski added to this point with the description of a high school history teacher’s classroom which used two methods to teach WWII. The first was a straightforward method, recognizable to almost anyone. The latter method was an interactive web approach utilizing a game. The teacher found that the students who had more interests in the game and performed as certain leaders did in history retained more information and performed much better on the assessment (2007). This example greatly supports the theory of constructionism because the students who had a more hands-on lesson and interacted with the game performed better than students who were just lectured to. I had a similar experience when teaching the executive branch of government. Two classes were allowed to create their own ideal presidential candidate. The students picked what race, party, religion, and stance on important issues their candidate would take. These students were more successful with the executive branch because they were allowed to construct their knowledge of the office of the president.

Jonathan Garrett

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program 7. Constructionist and Constructivist Learning Theories. [Educational video]. Baltimore: Author

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.