Week #7 Reflection

Reflection Post:

            As I look back through these past 7 seven weeks, I have seen that it is going to take much more on my part in order to get my classroom efficient at being technology enriched.  I have found that it is going to take time to develop enriching activities that coincide with my curriculum. 

            I really enjoyed my time working on my GAME plan.  I have found that I will need to continue to put more time into searching for better and better resources for my classes can use them.  I would have liked to been able to use my GAME plan while I was teaching, so it was difficult to see if what I was planning was going to work out well.  I know that once the school year starts, I will have some projects for my students to do almost right away.  It will be enjoyable both for me and my students to use these projects.

            One of the things that we discussed a lot during this course was the limits we have as teachers to use some forms of technology.  I know that it will be up to teachers like us to get administrations across the US to understand the usefulness of social media and online collaboration sites.  We will need to develop interactive lessons that help to showcase these types of sites, but also to share them with other teachers.  By sharing our knowledge, it will help others to see that they can use them in their own classrooms as well.

Jeff

Week 4 Blog Posting, GAME Plan Progress

Blog post week # 4

            This week I have been working on creating my Weebly website for my classes.  I plan on having the basics set up by next week so I can get your feedback on it.  I like the idea of placing a Blog on that site so that parents can communicate with me and each other.  What I have found about Weebly, is that I can upload any document to it at anytime and then I have the power to open it up so others can see it.  That has been a great tool to be able to work ahead.  Also, I have been converting my Word documents to PDF files so that more people can look at them without worrying about any compatibility issues.        Another thing that I will be doing more of when the school year opens is to convert my Smart Notebook files to PDF files prior to uploading them to my website.  I have found that in the past, my students do not install the Smart Notebook software onto their own home computers.  My school has licenses for the students to use, but they do not take the time to download it.  I have also created a step by step how to list and posted it on my website.  As I continue to reach my goal of having better communication I have seen that there are more opportunities today for me to be able to pass along information to families, but it will be up to them to want to hear from me on a regular basis.  I have thought about creating a Twitter account for my classes and just posting the daily homework on it, but I am not sure of how well that would be received by parents.  Have any of you tried Twitter for this yet?

            My second goal of developing more enriching lessons is becoming a labor of love.  I have been spending a bunch of time searching through Smart Exchange on Smart Board's website .  I have found multiple lessons for both my Geometry and Advanced Algebra courses.  I have also found quick assessments to use as well with the Smart Response systems (hand held clickers) that I have in my classroom.  This searching has made me think about how a go about developing lessons to engage my students more.  I have been looking through You Tube and Teacher Tube to find quick intro videos to show at the beginning of class while I am passing out papers or taking attendance.  When the students are finished watching these videos, I will have quick questions for the class to answer as the warm-up for the lesson.  I think that by continuing to find more interactive lessons, my students will become more engaged in the learning process, “Students need to have opportunities to experience well-structured, challenging, and worthwhile activities that address the important mathematics topics” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 247). 

           

Jeff

Reference:

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.

Week 3 Blog posting, what can I do to achieve my GAME Plan

         

            As I researched about what I could do to continue to implement my personal GAME plan this week, I have seen the need to completely update my classroom website.  I will no longer be using the site that is provided by my school district.  At my district, we are using Moss, it is not user friendly.  Parents and students have a difficult time accessing the information that I post there.  They can not open some files and they are asked for passwords most the time when they are not in the district’s servers.  I will be using Weebly for my new site.  At this site, I can have full control of what is there and when it can be open to be shown to students.  By that I mean that I can upload a couple of chapter’s worth of information and hide what they do not need until later.  I have found that to be worth so much to me.  I can spend a few hours one day prepping out and not have to worry about it at a later time.  Another thing that is nice with a Weebly site is that it can allow students to respond to questions that I post there.  They can also ask each other questions in an open forum.  This will allow students to collaborate with each other and to let students that might be quite in class become an important resource to others while online.  Also, I can just place a hyperlink on my school’s site that will link them to my new Weebly site.  I also plan on utilizing my school’s email service through our online grade book program, Skyward.  There I will be able to email any of my classes the information that they need and I can also attach documents to the emails.  This is a great service that I already have, but I have not taken full advantage of it.  I plan on using it weekly for letting families to know what is coming up during the week and to announce any upcoming assessments. 

            My second goal is going to take more time to develop enriched lessons.  What I can do to achieve that goal is to continue to search the internet for activities that correspond to what chapter I am in, even for review.  As stated by Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, “Digital tools offer several opportunities for embedding strategies within the learning process”, (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 126).  What I like about using the embedded nature is when we are using the classroom Smart Board, I can anticipate where students will need extra resources and have these resources linked within our notes.  Since I also store our classroom set of notes on my website, students will then be able to re-read the notes online and also use the links that were embedded in the lesson for extra clarification.  Using my time off during the summer, I should be able to find a semester worth of activities.   

Jeff

Reference:

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.

Help....

I am having trouble posting responses to your blogs.


I am on a two week camping trip in Northern Wisconsin and I am using my Droid hooked up to my laptop and am having issues when it comes to posting.

Any ideas???


Jeff

Blog Post week #2

Blog post week # 2

            Two goals that I have for my GAME plan using NETS-T standards are to, communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats 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.  The actions that I need to take in order to achieve these two goals are to  develop a website that is easily used for families to access classroom information and to promote the use of it, and to continue to research the web for better lesson activities to be used within my classroom for the enrichment of my students during their lessons.  The way that I will monitor these things is to have a counter placed on my website to watch the traffic that it gets and to also have extra credit within the website for students to find if they are visiting it.  I can also see how the activities that I find for my classes to use are providing my students a better understanding of the materials by using exit slips and also comparing their score to previous classes that did not have the extra resources in their lessons.  The way I will evaluate and extend my GAME plan is to communicate with the families of my students to see if they are using the website to see information.  I can do this by a simply take home survey for the students to give their parents.  I can then find see if it is being utilized by the families.  I will also continue to evaluate my students’ scores on their quizzes and tests to see if there is a marked improvement with the help of my web based activities. 

Jeff

References:

International Society for Technology in Education, (2008). National education standards for teachers. (NETS-T). Retrieved on July 4, 2011 from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

Welcom 6713!

My name is Jeff Murphy and I am a high school math teacher in DeKalb, Il.  We are about 75 miles west of Chicago.  Good luck to everyone!

Jeff