Reflection on Emerging Technologies

One thing that is important to me is adventure and change. Remember when you where a child and everything seemed new and engaging, that is what studying new and emerging technology is like. Over the past few weeks I have been studying about emerging technologies in the field of education like, gaming, mobile devices, cloud computing, online communication tools, smart objects and personal webs (Johnson 2009) through my course work at Walden University. These exciting innovations have the potential to change the face of computing and education. The particular innovation that caught my attention was mobile devices. I just recently purchased a 3GS iPhone and I am totally obsessed with the power of the device. It does way more than make phone calls it is a powerful computing tool that has a great amount of classroom potential. First of all the device it’s self engages students and it’s easy to see why the first time you pick it up. With a touch of the finger students are socially connected to the world. There is YouTube, Google, Dictionaries, and games. There are educational applications, for my content area of music there are keyboards, metronomes, tuning apps, solfegio and theory apps the list goes on and on. So if students own these devices and are engaged by them why not start incorporating them into lesson plans so that teachers and students are participating and preparing for life in the 21st century.

References:
Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Smythe, T. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Used by permission of The New Media Consortium.

Reflecting on Differentiated Instruction

For the past 8 weeks I have been studying Differentiated Instruction (DI), Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how technology can be a beneficial tool in both instructional practices. I have read a great deal of information by Carol Ann Tomlinson, and would advise anyone interested in DI to read anything she has written on the subject. Tomlinson premise is that DI is a philosophy of teaching. She suggests that teachers re-evaluate why they are teaching (Laureate, 2009), to dispense information or to help children gain knowledge and grow as human beings. She also suggests knowing students in a meaningful way so that they can be assisted in finding education success.

During the Past 8 weeks I have taken course 6714 Reaching and Engaging Learners Through Technology through Walden University. During that time I have taken part in a social networking program called Differentiation Station (DS). For the purpose of collaboration, I set up a Ning network at http://www.ning.com/networks called Teachers Utilizing Technology, and invited fellow classmates to join me in researching the implementation of DI, UDL through the integration of technology into our classrooms. During our time of sharing I acquired many useful sites to aid in carrying out the principals of DI and UDL, some of which are, “differentiating learning by readiness, interest, and learning profile” (Laurete, 2009). As I noted earlier Tomlinson suggests that knowing students in a meaningful way helps teachers find the best ways to help a student find success. Some technology tools that I gleaned and found the useful from the DS that help teachers get to know their students better are: http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Knowing+the+Learner , this site has an extensive list of links to help in the development DI. It contains learning style inventories, leaning profile surveys, multiple intelligence surveys, and other resources for getting to know your learners. Survey Pirate http://www.surveypirate.com is another great site where you can build you own student surveys that reflect your personal content area.

Finally, as I begin to integrate more DI into my personal lesson plans I will take this thought from Tomlinson in to consideration, start slow, “It is better to do a few things well. Set goals for yourself, and stick with them, but make sure they are reasonable goals” (Tomlinson, 1999). Therefore, for the next school year I will set the goal to know my students better through a series of surveys, and using that information to direct my instructional practices to insure that every student is getting what they need to succeed in my classes, while carefully monitoring the stressfulness of the new classroom practices.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Differentiating Instructional Elements. Baltimore: Author.

Tomlinson, C. (1999). Differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

Reflecting on the GAME Plan

The world today is changing fast and technology is the driving force. Therefore educators and students must be prepared to keep pace with the changes. In order to keep up with the changes you need a plan like the one Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2009) developed the GAME plan. I have incorporated this plan into my own teaching career during the past eight weeks. So far I have successfully set up a website for my classes to use. This website will help students and parents stay organized and abreast of performance dates, class projects, class rules, enable them to print necessary forms and practice their repertoire. I plan to keep extending the usefulness of the site by planning for future additions of music based links. Today’s students can no longer be taught with just academic content in mind. The world is changing fast and technology is a driving force behind the changes. Students must be prepared to be competitive in a burgeoning global society. That is why I intend to use my website to help students further those skills.

Reference:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom
use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

With my own technology GAME plan now underway I look forward to the future, considering further uses of the organizational technique, originally created by Katherine Cennamo, John Ross, and Peggy Ertmer in their book Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use (2009). Students as well as teachers need to find ways to self direct their learning within a exponentially growing technological and global society. Therefore, the GAME plan is an excellent tool for student use as well as for teachers to plan for self directed learning. For instance, students today are responsible for learning more than just academic content standards. To stay competitive in a global society they must also be current with the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS•S). They must be able to plan for personal development of creativity, innovation, communication and collaboration. They must also plan to develop their web literacy skills, critical thinking and problem solving capabilities and all under the umbrella of digital citizenship (ISTE, 2007). With this seemingly insurmountable amount of skills to become proficient at students must set some goals. That’s were the GAME plan comes in. Using the GAME plan students could choose several NETS•S that they would like to become more proficient at and set up a plan to meet them. They could keep a journal of the actions they plan to make to achieve their goals, and then monitor their own progress by reviewing their journals and re-evaluating their plan on a weekly basis. This type of self propelled learning is exactly what 21st century learners need to stay competitive in modern society.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: a standards based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

ISTE International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). NETS-S. Retrieved November 9, 2009, from Http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2008Standards/NETS_S__Standards_Final.pdf

A G.A.M.E. Plan Evaluation

Once again, looking back over my game plan, which was originally created by Katherine Cennamo, John Ross, and Peggy Ertmer in their book Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use (2009), I will be evaluating how well the integration of NETS-T standards have been used in the plan.

Overall, my original GAME plan for integrating technology into my content area has been successful. The development and implementation of NETS-T standard 3c, “communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats (ISTE, 2008) has been successful. Choir web-pages have been successfully uploaded and linked to the schools website, and a concept map to help organize the ongoing development of the website has also been successfully established.

Presently, I am still developing a plan to integrate a class blog link on to the website for assessment and learning community purposes. Vicki Davis, IT director, teacher and co-creator of the Flat Classroom project suggests subscribing to an RSS reader to organize and monitor student blogs (Laureate, 2009). She also suggests that students be assigned tags for their work so that finding and subscribing to their blogs is made easier. Prospectively, I plan to develop and integrate her ideas into my own GAME plan.

In the future, I would like to extend the development of integrating technology into my content area, by staying updated and informed about technological developments through networking with other educators through Eduwiki, located at http://musiceduwikius.wikispaces.com , this was also suggested by Vicki Davis (Laureate, 2009). This site provides connections to almost every content area, allowing teachers with the same interest to connect and build grass root projects, keeping life long community based learning alive.

Resource:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program eleven. Spotlight on technology: Social networking and online collaboration Part 2. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.

Continueing to Review the Choral Technology G.A.M.E. Plan

Again this week I will be looking back over my technology G.A.M.E. plan examining how effective my actions have been in achieving my goals, what I have learned so far to apply to my instructional practice, what do I still need to learn, and how I plan to adjust my plan to meet my current needs . The G.A.M.E. plan was developed by Katherine Cennamo, John Ross, and Peggy Ertmer in their book Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use (2009).

Being the holiday season, it has been hard to move forward with the set up of website. There have been problems linking the new website to the different buildings web pages. The website needs to be accessible from the middle school and the high school pages. However, the organization of the website flow chart is progressing. Making a strong resource link page has become one of my biggest concerns. Having resources that help build students understanding and performance skills are desired for this section. John Kusmich, Jr. suggests several usable music theory and ear training software programs in his Choral Director article (pp. 28-31, 2009). The most interesting and usable where, Essentials of Music Theory 3, and Alfred’s Interactive Musician, by Alfred www.alfred.com, as well as, EarMaster distributed by Emedia www.emediamusic.com , all offered self-paced drill and practice software and promoted sight reading skills, a desirable skill for singers.

As mentioned in chapter 16 of Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009), “these innovative methods for helping students practice on their own carry many benefits that are hard to dispute. They can bring exemplary models of performance into a student’s home at little cost, which is especially useful for student who do not have access to private lessons.”

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: a standards based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

Kuzmich, J., Jr. (2009, November). Music Theory & Ear Training Software.
Choral Director, 28-31.

Reviewing the Technology GAME plan

Title: Reviewing the technology G.A.M.E. plan.

To begin with I would like to site where the idea of the GAME plan came from. The plan was developed by Katherine Cennamo, John Ross, and Peggy Ertmer in their book Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use (2009). Over the past few weeks I have been developing my own GAME plan to meaningfully incorporate technology into my choral curriculum. In short review, while following NETS•T standard 3c, http://www.iste.org I plan to build a class website that will create a base for students to revisit lessons for each week, stay current with the class calendar, and rehearse their songs with provided links to http://www.carlfischer.com Part-by-Part. I also plan to promote and model digital citizenship making sure that I as well as my students practice legal and ethical us of the digital information, NETS•T Standard 4a.

Last week I revisited my GAME plan and reviewed the resources I would need to accomplish my goals. So far I have set up a working flow chart that I still am changing and tweaking, trying to set up a logical flow of pages and links. I have downloaded a free PDF converter from http://www.pdf995.com/ to help my readers with accessibility. The technology director has been contacted and to begun the process of uploading my new website. And while there has been a few problems creating the proper links with in our school website the project is progressing as planned.
After reading the resources from my Walden University class Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas on assessment I have decided that I wanted to modify my plan by adding a class blog link onto my website. I will use this blog to create a platform for formative assessment of students understanding of musical terminology and digital citizenship. In the article Assessing for Technology Literacy by Dr. Daniel E. Engstrom, he suggests that “… assessment be viewed as a scrapbook rather than a single snapshot. In other words, viewing one particular source of evidence (e.g., a test, a project, notes, or observations) will not give a complete picture of student development”(2005). Student blogs will provide another layer of empirical evidence of what they have learned. Furthermore, with access to the blog being located on the website, parent’s colleagues and administrators can easily access what is being taught and learned in my class giving choir a little more credibility as an academic content.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: a standards based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

Engstrom, D. (2004). Assessing for technological literacy. Technology Teacher, 64(4), 30-32. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database November 24, 2009.

ISTE International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). NETS-T. Retrieved November 9, 2009, from Http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/FroTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T__Standards_Final.pdf