So far, I am doing well on my GAME plan. My goal for creating more authentic lessons for my students is going well. I have more and more people coming in to join my Facebook. I still feel that I might have to supplement internet resources over the Facebook application since most of the teachers are extremely busy. I have learned that communication with both experienced and inexperienced teachers is a plus since everyone has something to contribute. Some questions so far that has arise are, Are there other ways of doing this? What are some modifications for students who are so behind, that they are still in my classroom, but they are not graded on the level. How will I continue to engage them in the real life experience but not lose the rest of the class?
As for incorporating more technology into my classroom, I find it nice to have support from my former teachers, professors, and colleagues. Although some of them are very fearful of technology, but in the end, they contribute to the collaboration. I am now enjoying just playing with voicethread so I can create more lesson plans with this until I play with additional software. I enjoy Geometer’s Sketchpad to be a tool to use in the next year. I am ready to start the New Year with more knowledge up my sleeves to better our future society.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The GAME progress (week 3)
Goal 1: To create more authentic real life lessons to engage my students in critical thinking.
My goal seems to be like many novice teachers, having not enough experience in creating life like lessons in the world of mathematics. Often in this subject area, we have many students with a variety of learning styles and with many gaps to go along with this already challenging scenario.
My action last week was to invite teachers that I formerly work with to my Facebook. By becoming friends, we are able to share ideas when possible. Most of my colleagues have access to Facebook with their mobile phones since this wonderful collaborative software is blocked from their school. This allowed me to ask questions creating a nice atmosphere to collaborate and anyone who is willing or is fascinated will read or contribute. So far, I have had a few hits with discussions. Not only is this a great way to collaborate, but also a great way to record data and keeping it onto a server where I have the ability to access anywhere as long as there is internet. Another action that I did was to manually call my student teaching mentor and the head department of mathematics to ask for advice on certain lesson plans that I tended to have low success levels. While engaged in conversation with my mentors, I have the ability to take notes on my lesson plans, and take time to reevaluate what I have to enrich the lessons for better success. In addition to these steps I have taken, I would also need to purchase a large binder to hold all my revised lessons so that I all my new lessons will be in order and ready to be executed.
Because this is the beginning of my journey through the GAME plan (2009), I feel that I am not completely into the program yet, but just getting it started so that next week, the collaboration will begin on a larger note. I understand that teachers are very busy with their own lesson plans, and that is where Facebook becomes so convenient. By revising my lesson plans, I will see more engagement of the students, as well as better scores, and better attitudes. Hopefully, I will have great collaboration on my Facebook and a nice large notebook full of new ideas in my revised lesson plans.
For my evaluation, I have not accomplished much, just a little bit of collaboration with my former mentors. I have learned much and in hopes to become like them in the future. I know I will be there. For now, I am still in the beginning of the stages, thus it is too early to evaluate.
Goal 2: To incorporate more technology into the classroom not limiting to PowerPoint and streaming.
My action for this goal is to again collaborate with my colleagues and former mentors. However, since they are more helpful in creating the lesson, the Instructor of Technology may be more helpful in this case. This week, I was not able to collaborate with him, however hopefully I will in the future during this course. For the meantime, I will collaborate with my colleagues in Walden University and read more than the necessary required readings to expand my knowledge of the new technology in the corporate world. As for my Facebook, I have become a friend to an Examiner of local Dallas for Technology. Every week, I see a piece of writing about new software or new ways of using software on my Home page. Though his is just beginning his Examiner career, I cannot wait until he starts to find more and more information to where he is putting a posting a day. Also, I have added some technology blogs in blog reader to view what is new or the talk about in the future. It is interesting to see what is happening and what is developing as well. Not only is this great, but sometimes deals on the internet are advertised, for example, I was able to download two types of software for free when they would have initially cost $50 if downloaded some other time. Although, they are just converters, but it would be nice to convert an .avi to DVD format. If you have a student that is having trouble, you could make a video and send it home. They would be able to play it in their DVD players. This will help if I am absent, they can watch a video of me teaching, causing the class to not be behind so much upon my arrival. The materials that I need are my laptop, converting software, blank DVDs and CDs, Facebook, internet, and my blog.
As for my monitoring, just watching my technology use in the classroom is great way to indicate if I am using technology to enrich my lessons. Also, a binder with many saved streaming and DVDs as well, so I will be able to do this again with future students.
For my evaluation, I feel it is a little too early to evaluate my progress since this is only the beginning of the journey for this goal.
My goal seems to be like many novice teachers, having not enough experience in creating life like lessons in the world of mathematics. Often in this subject area, we have many students with a variety of learning styles and with many gaps to go along with this already challenging scenario.
My action last week was to invite teachers that I formerly work with to my Facebook. By becoming friends, we are able to share ideas when possible. Most of my colleagues have access to Facebook with their mobile phones since this wonderful collaborative software is blocked from their school. This allowed me to ask questions creating a nice atmosphere to collaborate and anyone who is willing or is fascinated will read or contribute. So far, I have had a few hits with discussions. Not only is this a great way to collaborate, but also a great way to record data and keeping it onto a server where I have the ability to access anywhere as long as there is internet. Another action that I did was to manually call my student teaching mentor and the head department of mathematics to ask for advice on certain lesson plans that I tended to have low success levels. While engaged in conversation with my mentors, I have the ability to take notes on my lesson plans, and take time to reevaluate what I have to enrich the lessons for better success. In addition to these steps I have taken, I would also need to purchase a large binder to hold all my revised lessons so that I all my new lessons will be in order and ready to be executed.
Because this is the beginning of my journey through the GAME plan (2009), I feel that I am not completely into the program yet, but just getting it started so that next week, the collaboration will begin on a larger note. I understand that teachers are very busy with their own lesson plans, and that is where Facebook becomes so convenient. By revising my lesson plans, I will see more engagement of the students, as well as better scores, and better attitudes. Hopefully, I will have great collaboration on my Facebook and a nice large notebook full of new ideas in my revised lesson plans.
For my evaluation, I have not accomplished much, just a little bit of collaboration with my former mentors. I have learned much and in hopes to become like them in the future. I know I will be there. For now, I am still in the beginning of the stages, thus it is too early to evaluate.
Goal 2: To incorporate more technology into the classroom not limiting to PowerPoint and streaming.
My action for this goal is to again collaborate with my colleagues and former mentors. However, since they are more helpful in creating the lesson, the Instructor of Technology may be more helpful in this case. This week, I was not able to collaborate with him, however hopefully I will in the future during this course. For the meantime, I will collaborate with my colleagues in Walden University and read more than the necessary required readings to expand my knowledge of the new technology in the corporate world. As for my Facebook, I have become a friend to an Examiner of local Dallas for Technology. Every week, I see a piece of writing about new software or new ways of using software on my Home page. Though his is just beginning his Examiner career, I cannot wait until he starts to find more and more information to where he is putting a posting a day. Also, I have added some technology blogs in blog reader to view what is new or the talk about in the future. It is interesting to see what is happening and what is developing as well. Not only is this great, but sometimes deals on the internet are advertised, for example, I was able to download two types of software for free when they would have initially cost $50 if downloaded some other time. Although, they are just converters, but it would be nice to convert an .avi to DVD format. If you have a student that is having trouble, you could make a video and send it home. They would be able to play it in their DVD players. This will help if I am absent, they can watch a video of me teaching, causing the class to not be behind so much upon my arrival. The materials that I need are my laptop, converting software, blank DVDs and CDs, Facebook, internet, and my blog.
As for my monitoring, just watching my technology use in the classroom is great way to indicate if I am using technology to enrich my lessons. Also, a binder with many saved streaming and DVDs as well, so I will be able to do this again with future students.
For my evaluation, I feel it is a little too early to evaluate my progress since this is only the beginning of the journey for this goal.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
The GAME
Every person in the world should always have goals in their life so that they have a reason to keep living, the same idea in the 21st teaching realm. We, as teachers, should always have goals so that we have a reason to continue our profession. As a student teacher, my mentor taught me only how to direct teach, while working on my masters, I feel there are topics to learn and goals that needs to be set and reached in order to fully feel accomplishment in our teaching career. After reviewing the NETS-T, I see the broad spectrum of what needs to be learned in order to enrich my curriculum. As a professional, setting goals and viewing what my weaknesses and strengths are as equally important as to understanding the curriculum. By using the “GAME”, suggested by Dr. Cennamo (2009), this will help aid me in the process of creating my goals and accomplishing the as well.
Strengths
I feel my knowledge of using technology to teach in a classroom, such as using PowerPoint presentations or online streaming, is a strong point in my teaching career. Also, I encourage my students to be creative in developing a way for them to remember mathematic process. This is an example of promoting creativity in the classroom. Promoting collaboration is another strong point that I have. The ability in working together as a team is an important asset in our students’ lives and their future.
Weaknesses
Some of my weaknesses are probably common to for the novice teacher, such as creating authentic lessons that contain real life situations for our students every day. As for a mathematics teacher, there should be numerous ways to do this, but I still feel that I need to improve on this portion. Having my students validate websites will also be my weakness because I need to work on this process myself. Another weakness that I know I will need to strengthen is to properly assess my students’ work on instruction and their digital development.
The GAME
Goals:
The most important goal, I feel, is to create more authentic lessons for our students to understand the main reasons why we all need to learn mathematics. The second goal that I would love to strengthen is creating an engaging atmosphere not limited to Power Points and streaming.
Actions:
In order to broaden my view of lessons and creating authentic lessons for my students, I feel that collaboration with colleagues and perhaps some mathematic professors will help me with suggestions for certain lessons. There are many resources; however, I feel that an example with a face-to-face human interaction will solidify my memory and better understanding of the situation presented. As for the second goal, following technology blogs will inform me of the new software that are out there, and see what our corporate world is using. Also, as for presentations, it would be nice to create a movie clip of some sort to teach the lesson or even try to get the school to purchase a smart board. Also, collaborating with my fellow technology majors will help in my broadening of my views on teaching.
Monitor:
As I learn more about different scenarios for authentic learning, the more revisions on my lesson plans, the more I am improving my instructions. My train of thinking will be more geared towards authentic instructions. Also my students’ progress in learning the material will improve since the relevancy of the instruction is much higher than direct teaching. As for the second goal, compiling a list of options of all possible technology software to use in the classroom will be a good start, then contributing time to explore those options and list below of each software what it would be good for, instruction wise.
Evaluation:
As stated earlier, the evaluation stage would be seeing the complete compile forms of revised lesson plans for creating authentic lesson plans. When asking myself, “Did I learn anything?”, I would be able to say, “yes” since I kept of record of it. This gives me the opportunity to reflect on what I learned as well as improving my lesson from the beginning and how much improvement I have made. As for the second goal, just seeing my lesson plan include different software is a great way to see how much you learned. There are always software that you can learn and figuring it how to use it in your lesson is great way to see how much you learned.
All in all, we as teachers should always strive to better our profession. In order to do that, we consistently need to have goals and reach them at our pace. Without accomplishing any goals, we would be stuck in the boring same routine and the same type of scores as well.
Reference:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.
Strengths
I feel my knowledge of using technology to teach in a classroom, such as using PowerPoint presentations or online streaming, is a strong point in my teaching career. Also, I encourage my students to be creative in developing a way for them to remember mathematic process. This is an example of promoting creativity in the classroom. Promoting collaboration is another strong point that I have. The ability in working together as a team is an important asset in our students’ lives and their future.
Weaknesses
Some of my weaknesses are probably common to for the novice teacher, such as creating authentic lessons that contain real life situations for our students every day. As for a mathematics teacher, there should be numerous ways to do this, but I still feel that I need to improve on this portion. Having my students validate websites will also be my weakness because I need to work on this process myself. Another weakness that I know I will need to strengthen is to properly assess my students’ work on instruction and their digital development.
The GAME
Goals:
The most important goal, I feel, is to create more authentic lessons for our students to understand the main reasons why we all need to learn mathematics. The second goal that I would love to strengthen is creating an engaging atmosphere not limited to Power Points and streaming.
Actions:
In order to broaden my view of lessons and creating authentic lessons for my students, I feel that collaboration with colleagues and perhaps some mathematic professors will help me with suggestions for certain lessons. There are many resources; however, I feel that an example with a face-to-face human interaction will solidify my memory and better understanding of the situation presented. As for the second goal, following technology blogs will inform me of the new software that are out there, and see what our corporate world is using. Also, as for presentations, it would be nice to create a movie clip of some sort to teach the lesson or even try to get the school to purchase a smart board. Also, collaborating with my fellow technology majors will help in my broadening of my views on teaching.
Monitor:
As I learn more about different scenarios for authentic learning, the more revisions on my lesson plans, the more I am improving my instructions. My train of thinking will be more geared towards authentic instructions. Also my students’ progress in learning the material will improve since the relevancy of the instruction is much higher than direct teaching. As for the second goal, compiling a list of options of all possible technology software to use in the classroom will be a good start, then contributing time to explore those options and list below of each software what it would be good for, instruction wise.
Evaluation:
As stated earlier, the evaluation stage would be seeing the complete compile forms of revised lesson plans for creating authentic lesson plans. When asking myself, “Did I learn anything?”, I would be able to say, “yes” since I kept of record of it. This gives me the opportunity to reflect on what I learned as well as improving my lesson from the beginning and how much improvement I have made. As for the second goal, just seeing my lesson plan include different software is a great way to see how much you learned. There are always software that you can learn and figuring it how to use it in your lesson is great way to see how much you learned.
All in all, we as teachers should always strive to better our profession. In order to do that, we consistently need to have goals and reach them at our pace. Without accomplishing any goals, we would be stuck in the boring same routine and the same type of scores as well.
Reference:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.
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