Making oneself better in anything, being it a sport or a profession involves looking in the mirror critically and being able to assess strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are to be built upon, weaknesses are to be improved. As I have learned from my Walden University resources in the past months, improvement involves a GAME plan. But, in this case, GAME stands for Goals, Actions, Monitoring, and Evaluating (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009).
One of my goals for the coming year is make my classroom more digital. In the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS*T), this fulfills standard one, "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity". I will be creating a Facebook page for my class with status updates that will remind students of tests as well as offer links to enrichment opportunities. I plan to blog weekly to include thoughts and extensions that I cannot get to in class, as well as posting homework assignments and hints. I hope to podcast all of my lectures (using podbean) so that the students may still listen to the important information even if they missed a day (as well as reviewing for a test). This will promote student use of technology as a learning tool when students are not in the classroom (as Facebook and most blogs are blocked by the school servers).
A second goal I have for myself is to become a better professional by contributing to my school community as a technology leader. This past spring my principal asked me to take a few other teacher's under my wing to promote greater technology use in my building. Every classroom has a SmartBoard, but in most cases it is only the teacher's that use them. I hope to make our building more student centered. This falls under the purview of NETS*T standard five, "engaging in professional growth and leadership". Prenski states that, "once we let students (particularly in groups) take the lead on technology projects, teachers tend to see more engagement and better results." If I start by getting students more digitally involved in my classroom then other teachers will see their results and desire to try similar projects.
The actions I will take to achieve these goals are pretty straight forward. I will get my students to log onto my blog and podcast site early in the year so that they are familiar with it when they go home. (They will have to find me on Facebook on their own, even I cannot get around the school server's in that case.) Following up on my principal's plan I will be working to infuse greater student-centered technology projects in classrooms other than my own. At the end of the year I completed a couple of activities using classroom sets of IPods, that will be my first area of focus in regards to my fellow teachers.
I believe that monitoring this process will be a monthly endeavor. A month into school I should have started my digital classroom rolling and will be able to tell how effective it has been. I may switch my blog to a website if things are not going well at that time - my district just bought a new website program that I have been encouraged to try out. I hopefully, by the second month of the school year, will have helped institute a couple of changes with my colleagues as well, if not I will strive to work with a couple of them on my own.
Evaluating the success of my goals will be the final step in the process. Greater technology use by students, both in and out of the classroom should be evident during the course of the school year. If I find that my digital classroom has been more analog than I would like I will step back and evaluate the reasons why. While my lessons in past years have worked at acceptable levels, I believe that incorporating more technology will improve my students learning over the long run.
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). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx
Prensky, M. (2008). Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 40–45.
I have often wondered how Facebook could be used in the classroom. I love your idea! Facebook is something many of the studnets will check every day, and your status updates will be shown in their feed, which is very convenient. It would even be a good idea for parents to friend you, this way they would get your class updates as well. This would be a great way to get the parents involved in your classroom. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteAmy West