Saturday, September 22, 2012
Implementing my GAME Plan
Over the last week, I have been doing a great deal of research about Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), focusing on those geared toward integrating technology throughout the educational experiences of students. I have found pd360 to be a very helpful tool in this search. There are several PLCs available for integrating technology. There are also many videos and articles regarding this topic. I quickly became overwhelmed by the available resources!
As my research continued, I turned to colleagues for help in determining PLCs in which to participate, as well as for ideas for technology integration. I found several colleagues who were highly motivated, like myself, to integrate technology into the daily educational experiences of students. I have found these colleagues to be very helpful in finding resources, as well as discussing these resources from various perspectives. The Tech Coordinator at my school has been particularly helpful in helping me to become more aware of the technology resources available to me at my school. After speaking with her, I became overwhelmed with the possibilities, and decided to focus my attention on helping my students to more efficiently navigate websites so that I can build on this skill so that they can conduct research and create products later in the school year. One resource I found was Edmodo, which allows me to post links to websites, which I want my students to view and navigate through. I plan to use this resource to expose my students to educational websites so that they become used to navigating through websites with a specific purpose in mind.
I do want to do more research about specific strategies for integrating technology in the first grade classroom. There is a great deal of research for students and teachers working at higher reading and maturity levels, but first graders must be first introduced to the technology, and taught how to use it in appropriate and efficient ways. I will use this as a filter for my searches in pd360 in the future. I also will work on creating an Edmodo group for my colleagues and myself to share resources and ideas. By linking all of my colleagues, I will create a PLC which has the focus we want, as well as meet the standard regarding providing leadership in PLCs regarding technology.
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Collaboration According to Dana and Yendol-Hoppey (2009) collaboration is essential as you can build upon each other’s work. Working in a small or isolated school I believe this is much more difficult, making an online learning community that much more important. I am assuming that a base school is not huge or long on resources. It looks like you have stumbled upon a great source in PD360. Have you used it in the past or did you just sign up for the free trial? In any case, technology is one of those areas that can be difficult to expand knowledge on our own. November (2008) argues that we are smarter as a collective than we can ever be on our own. I believe these blog discussions are an excellent example, as there are already many different sites and ideas that others have shown me that I would not have come up with on my own.
ReplyDeleteAs nice as online communities are, it is great that you have found a group of colleagues that share the same vision as you. As you mentioned, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by the possibilities. We often need a good “support-group” to help us dream, or pull us back to the ground before we bite off more than we can chew. I am trying to come up with a better site than Edmodo, but believe that might be the simplest site for first graders. A little bit older students might like something like Moodle (moodle.org) where you can set up a class with links (even daily) more akin to what we are using in this course.
Best of luck!
Chris at www.hiscitech.blogspot.com
Resources:
Dana, N.F., & Yendol-Hopey, D. (2007). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oak, CA: Corwin Press.
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
First of all, how jealous am I of where you teach?! I had an opportunity to teach at Kahuku High School on the North Shore, but had just accepted my current job here in Idaho. One day I hope to get there (my wife introduced me to Hawaii in 2007 when we visited ... she went to BYU-Hawaii. I love it and feel like we will be there eventually!)
ReplyDeletePLCs are all the rage right now. I feel like it is the recent "trend" in education. However, this is a trend I wish would stick around. I think we need more collaboration within our schools so that we feel supported and form a cohesive group. Plus, it is nice to feel that you are not the only rat on a sinking ship some days.
I am currently exploring Edmodo myself. I feel like it is a pretty good starting point. I am one of the advocates of Facebook in schools, though. I think the site is like anything else in education, really. We need to teach and model how to use new technology apprporiately. That is our job. We are kind of like pioneers in that aspect. I think it is pretty cool.
In that vein, we need to teach our kids how to appropriately use technology on all levels. It is something we need to continuously do, just not at the grade level you are at. As a high school teacher, I have been working these first few weeks to teach appropriate internet interaction, searches and the like. Yeah, I get a few eyerolls here and there, but I think they hear me.
Well, hang loose and good luck! You have inspired me to start my own PLC here!
I also use Edmodo just about daily and I love it. My students enjoy it because they are able to post and view responses (of course with my strict guidelines on Netiquette and creating relevant and scholarly type responses). I love the site because I can create groups for each class and have them upload work there to me for me to grade.
ReplyDeleteYou can give students an assignment on Edmodo and provide links they can access in order to answer a prompt you may have. For example, I usually have my students go on The Learning Network where I assign a particular article they have to read and respond to. In a summary written in paragraph form, they have to answer the five W's and H. Then they have to choose one student to respond to after posting their initial response, very similar to what we do in the discussion boards. You can create a great unit for navigating websites and put it there, kind of like a web quest, for your students to work through.
Integrating technology with research is a fantastic way to make teaching research relevant and fun for the students providing the type of learner autonomy that Cennamo et. al discusses which will increase student interest and motivation (Cennamo et. al, 2009, p. 29). With Edmodo, your students will have a voice and be able to show who they are as first graders. You will be giving your students great practice and training for when they move on to higher grades.
Cennamo K., Ross J., and Ertmer P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
I have not used Edmond but it sounds like a great resource to try out. I responded to your blog because of the use of PLC's. My school has been very pushy on the use of PLC's within our content area. I teach Math II at my school and our Math II teachers meet every Thursday after school for about thirty minutes. I have found this to be the most valuable tool since I began teaching. We discuss everything from the students to curriculum and the even the use of technology. Our resources have told us the using technology will help increase student interest and motivation (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). With this being the case, there is no use for us to reinvent the wheel. So many of our peers have already found so many interesting tools for us to share and use we do not have to spend endless hours trying to find and research technology. Our media specialists at our school has also been a huge help in finding resources to help our math team incorporate different types of technology. Keep up the good work and thank you for the heads up on Edmodo.
ReplyDeleteCennamo K., Ross J., and Ertmer P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
Is Edmodo similar to creating a webquest? It sounds familiar because of the comment stating that you put websites in there for the student to explore. I currently use a website called Questgarden. Questgarden allows you to create your own web quests or modify one that someone else has created. The website did not take very long for me to use. I believe it is pretty much based on what the purpose is for utlizing the blog.
ReplyDeleteKschor- Edmodo is more like a blog spot/online classroom in my opinion. You can have students post responses to prompts you put on there. You can also create assignments on there for the students to access. I don't think you can make web quests on there, but it's great for students to upload all electronic work there so you can grade as opposed to getting a zillion different emails from students with attachments. Edmodo also links with Google so the students can attach their Google docs there.
ReplyDeleteYou can make web quests on zunal.com, though. I hear it's pretty easy to use when creating a web quest. I go to Questgarden to find web quest as well.