Social Learning Via Technology 2.0

Over a year later, I am amazed at how quickly social learning has exponentially expanded for high school students. My 14 and 16 year old kids regularly complete groupwork assignments and plan project presentations using facebook and skype. Frankly they wouldn't do it any other way -- couldn't be bothered to meet in the library at lunch or after school. They plan a time they know all group members will be at home and "meet online" using real time chat, email, facebook posts, or if working out a skit, for example, skype for the visual/auditory part. I have to stand in line to access one of our family's computers during after school hours.

The content of their projects has improved and increased dramatically from what I could ever have handed in while a high school student. They are producing resolutions for the United Nations to consider, critiques on the writings of published historians, to-scale drawn maps of Napolean's battle strategies, and up to the hour reports on current events. Kind of makes my galaxy in a shoe box project from my freshman year seem a little sad.

Technology Advocacy: Becoming An Agent for Change at School

Teaching through technology is coming to a campus near you. Call it paperless practices to sustain our planet or even teaching to the 21st Century learner. The inevitability of change is here. Teachers are faced with students who learn in different modalities than we did when we were kids. Student look the same, smell the same, even eat the same, but have remarkably different abilities than we did as students--some of which we haven't even figured out yet. And we may not even know just what we don't know about digital learning. We do know that caring, savvy teachers are becoming agents of change on school campuses everywhere and attempting to update teaching methods from the 19th or 20th century ones we are trapped in.
To effectively influence technology decisions at any school, a teacher must first get involved in that dreaded black hole of free time --the schoolwide committee. You know where I'm going with this, to lead technology change, one must be on the technology committee; to tranform curriculum, one must put time on the curriculum development committee. But, beyond attending meetings, be a role model for other teachers so that your lessons, your implementation into practice ideas are talked about. Be willing to share what you develop to bring others along. No one on our campus is the guru of anything, but we all know which teachers have a handle on the technology resources available and wonder what they are doing with all that time they reserved in the computer lab throughout the year.
In completing the requirements for my M.S. in Integrating Technology in the Classroom, I have learned to identify emerging technologies with applications for the high school classroom. They will have advantages and downfalls and almost always replace a different technology as they are implemented. To be worth the time and energy required for implementation, they must provide learning value at the level my students operate. I have practiced convincing colleagues and administrators to take up the challenge of implementing digital tools in meaningful and routine ways that engage students in active learning. In order for technology to be truly transformative in the education for my students, it must be useable and practical while logically teaching or reinforcing core content. I have even written a grant proposal for funding innovative uses of digital teaching tools. I found out that grant committees want specifics of the number of learners and teachers involved so their grant dollars can stretch as far as possible.
Through it all, I have had to make adjustments to my efforts. Surfing the web can be time consuming and completely distracting. So many pre-made online lessons there for the taking can waste the time of a curious educator. There can be so many multimedia, interactive, real world examples that can cloud the simple realities of teaching to specific learner outcomes and prevent true understanding.

Designing Online coursework for My students

The newest adventure in web 2.0 tools for me has been online course design. As a user of online education for over eighteen months now, I have come to admire the features and efficiencies of online learning. With a school district supporting online platforms for all classrooms, it has not been hard to make the leap to integrating an online component into my high school science classes. Not all my colleagues have made the effort though. Here is a presentation to convince a few die hards to give it a try: http://voicethread.com/share/1184439/

Reflection on Learning through Differentiation Groups

This course has meant so much learning in so short a time! I feel I have become a lifelong groupie of expert Carol Ann Tomlinson from the course videos and readings! Beyond that, I have learned so much about Universal Design for Learning, meaningful technology implementation, and differentiated instruction from and through my differentiation group. Our group was a talented bunch of individuals. We learned by example, through collaboration, and by doing. We set up a Ning to join and follow; advised each other and shared tips on our search for ways to implement technology in a differentiated classroom; and created a Voice thread each to share and comment about the overlap between Universal Design for Learning, Differentiation, and seamless classroom technology integration. As a group, we shared the great resources we found online. (Reading through discussions is easy at educ-6714-group1.ning.com )
Beginning with Universal Design for Learning, we agreed the all students CAN learn and deserve to be understood, instructed, and evaluated in ways that help them be the most successful. Everything you ever needed to know about UDL can be found on a wiki set up by a dedicated group of collaborative teachers at http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/. Many of the resources are elementary school related so, although I am a secondary school teacher, they work in my group collaborators’ classrooms. Who knows, someday our ning could evolve into a well-organized up-to -date resource for any teacher surfing the web like this one.
What are the best ways to use technology to gather information on and about our students? Once again, answering this question is easier through collaboration with colleagues on our differentiation Ning. We shared the online survey tools we had tried as well as the places on the web where we found terrific questions to ask our students in the beginning of the year as we are getting to know them both as people and as learners. The most flexible online survey site we found was survey pirate found at www.surveypirate.com
Next, we worked from the premise that one-size fits all education is outdated. As every classroom is likely to be populated by students with various levels of skill, readiness, and understanding, not to mention the various learning styles present in any student population, a clear case for differentiation of instruction exists. There are many web resources addressing differentiation in every type of classroom. At www.differentiationcentral.com everything from videos of differentiation in action to lesson plans on tiered instruction and more are available to the public. Planning curriculum around what students should know, understand, and do will logically lead to places where differences in instruction, assessment, and products students produce make sense.
Beyond even all this, our collaboration gave me access to free online graphing calculator as well as a cool art lesson from the Getty museum in Los Angeles to show my chemistry students in our very next unit!

Reflecting on My GAME Plan:

Integrating new technology tools into the high school science curricula I teach has been both challenging and exciting at the same time. I welcome the students’ interest and enthusiasm for using technology in new ways at school. My duty to educate my students for their futures will require integrating state curriculum standards with national technology standards from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf. Literacy at all grades must now include internet literacy, research on scientific topics now requires the ethical use of information and images found on the web, and critical thinking in science now should include skeptically evaluating the authority and authenticity of a web page.
So far it has not been easy or straight forward. I am, as they say, a ‘digital immigrant’ who has invested countless hours learning how to use new web 2.0 tools and other technology tools outside my comfort zone. The real work, the time-consuming work has been the planning in order to adapt their use in appropriate ways to improve student understanding of core content. Being out there on the leading edge of implementation of new technologies has its weak points. The learning curve has been steep and I need to make more use of online educator groups to find, share, and get help with resources. Quick implementation is not necessarily the best, so now I am focusing more on quality rather than quantity of technology integration.
My GAME Plan has followed the model set up by Cennamo, Ertmer, & Ross and now in the extend and evaluate stage, I can see so many areas that need improvement. First, I have relied more upon the paperless hand-in feature of our school’s network to get students to create and turn in more innovative work. Next,I have set up a Ning for my science students to join. This gets around the hassle of the prior platform which we were to use getting axed by our school district . This has been sooooo slow to get going as I wait and remind and cajole students into signing up and signing in. It is, after all, not really a social network. However,I can see blogging and posting via cell phone in my future as my two classes of seniors approach June and graduation and become less motivated about course requirements.


Reference:, J. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful ClassroomUse: A Standards-Based Approach (1 ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.

GAME Plan Extension

I am excited to extend my Integrating Technology learning by exploring digital tools for science classrooms at the National Science Teachers Association National Conference in Philadelphia in March. There will be a huge exhibit hall full of tools and contacts with expertise. There does seem to be too many online resources for science teachers for one person to wade through, subscribe to trials, evaluate their use in class hoping they improve content knowledge for students. Integrating technology for technology's sake is a waste of every one's time. I need some time off to do this properly and without getting behind on my grading (86 lab reports, here I come.)
Now, implementing a GAME Plan with my students in order to help them attain proficiency in different National Eduction Standards for Students is a great idea. I especially like the E in the GAME Plan anagram. Evaluate and Extending thinking is critical to true learning. We seldom give students time to reflect on their learning. Wit my science students, I have focused this year on skills and behaviors that fall into NETS standard 2: Social, ethical, and human issues and 5: Technology research tools •Students should use technology ethically and understand the effects of its misuse in society. I believe students should be able to use technology productively--using the web to find whatever they need with minimal distraction. More importantly, critical thinking is crucial in evaluating web resources, in separating fact from fiction, and making informed decisions.

Modifying My GAME Plan

In setting up my GAME Plan I followed the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-T) and Performance Indicators. The Goals of my GAME Plan were to facilitate and inspire student learning and to design and develop digital age learning experiences for my students.

While the project-based learning experiences I have been facilitating for my 12th grade science students have been engaging, I cannot say that they have been inspiring. For over half my students, I see creativity and ingenuity in the projects they create, but actually little science learning. Incomplete explanation or information is common in a project - even though the photos and diagrams they have found online are beautiful. Formative assessment to give students the opportunity to correct errors gave me mixed results. Some students simply weren't curious (or inspired) enough about the topic of their own choosing to pursue more than a superficial understanding and correct their errors. But I am undaunted, I will set better parameters for projects...hand out rubrics earlier in the assignment period and become more expert in the Web 2.0tools necessary to design better digital learning experiences.

I very much feel as if I have to grow into the connectivity available on the web. I would love to be involved in connecting my classroom to other cultures, to experts, and to other projects around the world but do not have the time yet to find the resources. I will seek out epals and contacts in the online community when I get some free time to explore eduwiki.us.