Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Phase III
  1. How your understandings of the standards changed based on your experiences:
    • Designing Lessons
    • Teaching Lessons
    • Assessing Student (Peer) Artifacts
  2. What you learned about preparation and teaching from your peers
    • Lessons
    • Feedback
  3. How your experiences might impact your future teaching experiences.

  • Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
  • Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
  • Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
  • Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

1. How my understanding of the standards changed based on my experiences with designing lessons was a challenge at first because I was not too sure how I felt about using technology. But the standards were easy to use when designing a lesson for my class. When you think of a technology that you want to integrate into your lesson plan for your third grade students, you first think of the first standard. Making it a learning experience and making it creative. How will a technology be useful to you, as the teacher, if its not inspiring and creative for students? It will be just boring and most students wont be engaged. The second part, you should think of what will help your students learn to develop digital-age learning experiences. Basically, when designing your lesson you don't want it to be old news technology. You want it to be interesting and up to date. For my lesson, I taught two new things to me and is new to technology, which was creating a website and using Glogster.com. The third standard is important because it adds on to your second standard and how you should use digital-age technology, but you should only use a technology that will help with your students learning. It wouldn't be beneficial for you as the teacher to use a technology that wont help your students learn what they need to, this will be a waste of technology. The last standard when creating and teaching a lesson plan you should keep in mind that students are most likely new to this and are not going to understand the risk that could happen to them if they are not smart with the internet or any technology use. As the teacher it is important to set aside some time to go over citizenship and responsibility to using the internet and computers. This doesn't need to go into your lesson plan, if you don't want it to. But it should be addressed before you do your lesson plan that is full of technology use.

2.When teaching the lesson that I created I learned from my peers that prior knowledge is KEY to using technology. If it was my actual class I would have taught them how to use Glogster.com and how to use my website before I taught the lesson. But my lesson seemed to be great and the class learned the two questions I gave to them and did what I wanted them to do and took away knowledge I wanted them to as well.  I think that me being prepared suffered because my class wasn't sure how to use the technology, but now I know for the future.

Feedback: What I learned from my feedback was that if the students had more time on figuring out how to work Glogster.com they would have felt more confident doing the lesson. But that the lesson overall was a great lesson and was good for the grade level that I was shooting for.

3. I had a great time in this class because it has taught me so much!! Not only about technology, but how to be a better teacher. It has taught me that being prepared is very important as a teacher and there is many forms of being prepared.  I know now that with the use of technology in the classroom it is important for you as the teacher to know when is the right time to teach your lesson with technology and when it wont benefit your students at all. It is also very important to teach technology that is useful, such as up to date and what the rules are for that school. Teaching your students about safety and guidelines to technology is also important. Overall this class has taught me a lot on how to teach technology and how to be successful at it. :)
Phase I
  1. Assessing Prior Knowledge: If you were teaching this with the targeted grade level students
    • how would prior experience have been assessed?
    • What would you expect to learn from assessing your students' prior knowledge?
    • How would this information be useful in the planning process?
  2. Plans Instruction: Discuss how your goals, objectives, and outcomes are
    • clearly stated
    • appropriate for students
    • aligned to state standards
  3. Planning Assessment: How will your assessment tools demonstrate
    • the performance of linked goals and/or objectives
    • student engagement in higher order thinking
    • meeting individual student needs


    1. Assessing Prior Knowledge:
    With the lesson about Franklin D Roosevelt, prior knowledge would be very important with the technology that will be given to them to use. I would assess the prior knowledge a day before the lesson is given to them so that they get the feel of how to use Glogster.com and my website that I created. They would be expected to know how to sign in, and how to use the websites given to them.

    I would expect to learn from assessing my student's prior knowledge what they are able to do and what their weaknesses are using the websites. If it was too much of a difficulty for my students to learn the tools given to them, I would recreate my lesson plan to where it would be simple for my students. I feel though with this lesson plan the websites are very easy to use, with any grade level.

    The information with the prior knowledge of my students would be very useful because it would help me create a very well thought out lesson plan. With my students learning how to use new technology, it would be very useful for me as the teacher to know how my students are doing with it because it can only show me how well my students will do the overall lesson. 

    2. Plans Instruction:
    My goals, objectives, and outcomes are clearly stated in my lesson plan. My goal is for my students to learn the states standards on FDR and what they are expected to know. My objectives are stated in my lesson plan with how we are going to learn all about FDR. The outcome was very nice with the how well the class did their posters and how much information was given to them in the website and how well they answered the questions in their poster.
    Example of my Standards:
    Display:

    Arrow Open GA- Gwinnett County Public Schools Academic Knowledge and Skills (AKS)
    Arrow Open Grade Level: Third Grade
    Arrow Open Subject Area: Social Studies
    Arrow Open Topic: I - Life and Times of Historical Figures - Franklin Roosevelt
    Expectation: discuss the life of Franklin Roosevelt and his efforts to expand people's rights and freedoms in a democracy (GPS) (3SS_I2008-42)
    Expectation: describe how Franklin Roosevelt displayed positive character traits (GPS) (3SS_I2008-44)
    My lesson is very appropriate for my third graders because it follows the state standards very well. The website was created to them, by me, to help them answered the guided questions that they will be later assessed on. I also know that Glogster.com is a very helpful tool because it helps them with their creativity and with that being said, it will help them learn as well.

    3. Designing Instruction
    My lesson is organized just like this in my lesson plan:

    1. I will ask the class what they know already about Franklin D. Roosevelt (2 min)
    2. I will explain to class what lesson that they are about to do. I will state that they will be given certain websites that they have to find with one partner, which the websites will be on FDR information. (3 min)
    3. Once they find these websites they will have to find valuable information that the class might find useful. Basically they are trying to answer the two questions given to them. (10 min)
    4. Once they have their notes on FDR, the class will come together as a whole and discuss their findings. This will help students that might be having a hard time with the project to catch up. (if needed)
    5. Then after the students have their information about the president they will use Glogster to create a campaign ad or advertisement for FDR and try to persuade their class to vote for FDR, as if he were alive today and running. (10 min)
    6. The students must keep in mind that this project is for the students to learn the HISTORY of what was going on when FDR was president. They are not trying to persuade their class that FDR will fix the problems in the world now, but in the past. (5 min)
    7. Rubrics will be discussed in the beginning to what is expected of them.

    Also my lesson plan clearly states how students with individual needs will be able to get help with, not only from me, but from their classmates:

    Differentiated Instruction Students who have special needs, I feel would exceed in this lesson. It is a very hands on experience for the class as a whole. Students will be paired with a partner to work on project together and collaborate on ideas. This will help students with special needs because they will be paired with someone who can help them in a particular area and maybe able to help their partner as well. If students are still having a hard time them we will collaborate as a class on main ideas for the campaign ad and then once they have those they can work on the creative part with their partners.

    Pairing up children can be beneficial for students, with individual needs, but can help students also who don't need special help either. They can learn a lot just having to work together. 

    4. Planning Assessment
    My lesson connects, both the state standards of what they need to know about FDR, but how to use a certain technology.   With my lesson, not only will they learn about FDR, but they will learn basic tools on how to use websites. With using both technology and states standards it will help them learn in higher order because it helps create a better understanding of what they are learning.




Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Phase II

Phase II 
For my implementation I created a Website that was all about Franklin D. Roosevelt  for the students to use.  This website was created based on two questions that the students needed to know. These two questions; discuss the life of FDR and his efforts to expand people’s rights and freedom in a democracy and two, describe how FDR displayed positive character traits.  Once my students answered the questions with the informative website they went to Glogster.com and created a poster with the information that they learned from the two questions given to them. I learned from the implementation process that if I ever were to teach this lesson to my students, that we should have class time set aside to learning on how to use Glogster and how to use the website that I created, just so the lesson goes more smoothly.
 
The goals and objectives were maintained was not with me lecturing like most history classes, but very hands on learning with answering questions from the website that I created and then creating a poster of FDR with the questions integrated in it. With this my goals of them learning the states requirements were done, but learning new technology was implemented as well.

The modifications for individual needs were pretty simple just because this activity is really for partner work. If it was a class full of third graders that I knew as my class then I would pair them up 

The website I created. 
                                                                                    with students that might be strong in one part of               the lesson and weak in the other. This activity is very hands on so students with learning disabilities would probably have an easier time with learning the content. The modifications for individual needs would be partner work.

The evidence that I have that indicates my students success for this lesson is  the student in this example, first shows me the most important part, that they understood the questions given to them in the website and that it was a reachable task to find the answers to find the answers to the questions, and secondly that gloster.com was a beneficial website for students in achieving this activity. 

 

Ciara's FDR Poster
For my next example it provides evidence in which the student understood and could pick up the technology of Glogster.com. This student used pictures, movies from Youtube.com and even music!!:
Annie's FDR Poster

While teaching this lesson to the class, I felt prepared until the part where Glogster.com wasn't working for certain people and certain computers. It was a bummer because for me I had no problem using it until I started teaching the actual lesson to my class. I believe that if the students had a day where they could use Glogster.com just learn it, it would have made the lesson move more smoothly. I was very impressed with how well my website worked, how exciting it was using a new tool!! My reflections from myself I feel will defiantly help me in the future not only teaching students about history, but about technology. Also my classmates reflections have helped me a lot in the fact that they have told me their honest opinions in telling me what I can improve on and what I am good at already. Some comments from the classmates:
            "You used a lot of close proximity which is always good and you gave immediate positive praise, which helps to boost the students eagerness to participate on the lesson. Try to give a little more of an introduction or hook so that students do not get confused at first."
           " The website and Glogster are really great ideas! I can totally see myself using those in other classes. Thanks for showing us!"



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Global awareness and digital-age communication

With the digital-age communication, it is important as the teacher to understand what it is and how to communicate it with your students. This website all-in-all talks about how digital-age communication can be confusing at times for people because one thing, there is NO emotions when reading a text or an e-mail so it can cause some issues. It can be beneficial to talk to your students about this and how to use digital communication (2012GraceBoyle).
It is also important to understand what are the technologies that can be used in the digital-age. Here are some of the different technologies:







Meeting diverse needs of learners through learner-centered strategies and equitable access

It is important as the teacher to make the classroom fit every students diverse needs. Doing this can be tricky to some teachers, but in reality there are many different ways to meeting diverse needs of learners through learner-centered strategies. This website  can be useful to teachers because not only does it talk about the importance of teaching diversity, but how you can do it! How cool is that!! This website has taught me that it can be actually more involving for the students for a more diverse classroom because in reality they are setting the stage for their learning (2006BrownUniversity).

Digital etiquette and responsible social interactions

In the classroom it is very important as the teacher to know what the students are doing while using the internet and how to make it a digital etiquette environment for students. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of being responsible in social interactions when talking about the internet is cyber bullying. As the teacher you should inform yourself on what it is, what are the characteristics of cyber bullying, how you can prevent it, and know the legal issues of it. One website I learned a lot about cyber bullying was STOP. Cyber bullying happens mostly to young children and teens and there are two types of cyber bullying, which are direct attacks and cyber bullying of proxy. A great way to prevent cyber bullying is to EDUCATE your students (Wiredkids Inc.)!!

Digital Etiquette or Netiquette is important for students to understand how important it is to be etiquette when using e-mail or communicating with others through the internet. Check this out to understand how to be etiquette through the web!

Safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology

When having technology in the classroom it is important to understand how to first, have set goals on how the technology should be used a tool in the curriculum and secondly, how it should be a safe environment  for students to use as a resource. This website, Leland Public Schools : Responsible Use is a great resource for teachers or other school members that are creating rules and guidelines to making technology a safe, legal, and ethical use in the classroom. The Leland Schools have ideas from how to legally monitor  the uses of how the students are using the internet, and how to legally block certain websites that students should not be looking at while in the classroom. They also state how it is very important to have a "privilege, trust, and individual accountability" for students, so that this  insures that students will promise to use the internet safely and responsibly (2011LelandPublicSchools). I feel that this website can help a lot of schools and teachers to shape a safe environment for students, when it comes to the more use of the internet,  in the classroom.