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.

Evaluating My Game Plan

I have successfully set up a wiki online. (small applause) Not too painful to do, yet I can see it will take roughly two hours a week of my time to moderate. Now the challenge has become getting my students regular access to computers at school. Digital learning is bringing about growing pains, at least on our campus. The labs are usually booked and the laptop carts I had been relying on are more popular with other staff members so I'm sharing those more than using them as well. (Not to mention the entire prep period it takes to get then over to my classroom, plugged in and networked so students can make the most of their 40 minutes of class time.) I now know more about the wifi features of our laptop computers and the dead zones of the network that other teachers use me as a resourse at times.
This March we will receive inservice training on a new software platform to replace Blackboard Academy for online learning, discussion groups, assignment posting etc... After I already put 50 hours or more of my own time teaching myself Blackboard to be able to use it this year!
So, onward... this marking period, we'll try podcasting from mobile phones with my high school seniors. I am both excited and apprehensive since the cell phone camera project met with mixed success.
The success of my Game Plan can be measured, I guess, in my change of attitude. Obstacles are not road blocks; they are simply hurdles to jump over. I have begun wearing my running shoes to school every day.

So GAME PLAN, How We Doin?

In monitoring my plan, we have come through my second week and my second Friday reflection on my progress.
My first assessment realization: In a world where technology can get student instant results, spending time to learn to apply technology they already own is unappealing.
In my Contemporary Issues in Science classes this week, students took a tour of our school. Some of it has been newly renovated with updated lighting and energy conservation features, while some of it is twenty years old or more. Students brought along their cell phones to take pictures of features to inclued and discuss in their persuasive essay on the need or the challenges of conserving electricity in our high school. Not entirely sure how we'd get each student access to the images on their phones, I was able to rely on the fact that many students knew how to email themselves the photos. Others asked tech savvy students to take photos for them and gave them email addresses to use while easily a third of the class had no idea how to access the images stored on their phone and would rather lose the points in the assignment the photo would earn them than bother with the technology. This surprised me. "Couldn't I just get an image from the internet of a CF lightbulb?"
Second realization: web 2.0 tools are developed so rapidly that tech savvy teachers move on quickly. Needing to get on-the-job-training on the Blackboard Academy blog features, I found out that the district is moving away from that platform. My time and efforts would be better spent designing wiki spaces from free hosts on the web. So back to the drawing board with that goal.
Questions to follow up: Which wiki space will allow me the most free features, but still give me security for student privacy - a requirement fo my district?