Learning Management Systems

The following is a link to my voicethread trying to convince my co-workers of the importance of LMS.

www.voicethread.com/share/1537991/

Final Reflection 10/28/10

Throughout this course, I have gained a large variety of support and resources to improve myself as an educator. I intend on implementing several ideas learned from my social network into my classroom strategies. I also plan on making some immediate adjustments to my current instructional practices to customize my instruction as a result of my learning in this course. I am constantly looking to improve myself as an educator. This course has really given my some ideas to improve the way I currently operate in my classroom.

Working with my social network has been great! Together, we learned and discussed new ideas about UDL and DI. We discussed strategies to be used to support each individual learners readiness, interest, and learning profile. We created a list of quality resources to use when planning lessons and assessments to meet the expectations of UDL and DI. We actually created our own web page to help display our learning for two weeks of our course. We reviewed the importance of using UDL and DI in our classrooms. We spent time discussing the CAST web site. Together, we explored and found tools such as objective builder and lesson plan builder to be used with our classroom planning. All in all, it has been a pretty productive network. I hope to continue this network even after our course work has finished.

This course has already helped me develop new ways to incorporate UDL and DI into my classroom. The word that rings a bell is "Flexibility". Carol Ann Tomlinson has driven home the point that I need to be more flexible in the way I approach my objective, lesson, and assessment planning. I need to provide options in every aspect of my classroom. Students will thrive, if I just work with them to better undertsand their readiness, interests, and abilities. The biggest idea I have taken away from this course and Carol Ann Tomlinson is that there is no one way to differentiate. Every teacher can use UDL and DI differentely and be successful. I look to continue adding choices to my classroom activities. I plan on working closer with our instructional coach to improve the way I differentiate in my classroom. I recently created a tiered assignment and have began to include options in my daily homework activities.

This course has really empowered me with ideas and collaborative networks to support my use of UDL and DI in my classroom. I look forward to bettering my classroom by allowing more choices and flexibility into my all around activities. My whole mission is to provide an atmosphere of choices that allow everyone an opportunity to in the best way possible.

Final Reflection 8/19/10

Developing my personal GAME Plan over the past 8 weeks has been very beneficial to me. I began back in July creating goals I thought I could accomplish that would really bump my classroom instruction to the next level. One of my original goals was to successfully integrate at least 3 relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity during each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year. The other was to be able to model and facilitate the effective use of the digital tools before and during the the 3 relevant learning experiences to be created for each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

Once my goals were established, I began looking into the content I was teaching this year. I started looking for past activities that I could easily incorporate into my lessons. Our course textbook help give ideas for possible lessons or resources that could be used to support my goals. My blog posts have helped give me feedback from my peers about possible tools I could use to accomplish my goals. I am currently ready to use and model tools like bubbl.us, most Google Applications, voicethreads, screencasts, animoto, panoramio, and many others. Our course text helped give actual search engines for student research. The Library of Congress site is one that I will use on a regular basis.

The new learning that resulted from following my GAME Plan would be in the area of better understanding the different uses of the many tools I have been introduced to through Walden University. I also took the time to better understand topics discussed in our course textbook like promoting creative thinking, problem based activities, digital story boards, and social networking activities. The textbook really helped give an explanation as to why these types of activities combined with technology are beneficial to today's learner.

The most immediate adjustment I will make to my instructional practice would be to start teaching my students about the tools we will be using in class this year. I am also hoping to work with the computer teacher to help get our students proficient at using some of these basic tools. I would like to be able to introduce activities that require my students to use these tools without me spending large amounts of time reteaching the actual tools. I also plan on taking baby steps. I will probably create mini activities for practice before I actually require students to complete a large assignment.

This year is going to be my trial year. I plan on making a number of adjustments to my past activities to incorporate more technology. My monitoring and evaluating steps of my plan will be to monitor my practices and mark down positives and negatives throughout the year. I will make the necessary adjustments to improve each activity. I also intend on evaluating my new activities at the end of the school year to better understand what worked and what did not work this year. I am really excited to begin my journey.

Students and Standards

This week's discussion is how to use the GAME plan to help students develop a plan to meet the standards of the NET-S and NET-T. I would probably require my students to complete activities that are similar to the ones we have been completing over the last 6 weeks. I would have each student review the standards at the beginning of each trimester. I would have them pick one standard they would like to improve upon throughout the trimester. I would then have them create two goals for there GAME Plan. These goals would suggest ways the students would become proficient at these standards. I would then have them come up with an action plan to meet these goals. They would be required to create a plan to monitor their goals. At the end of the trimester, we would reevaluate their goals and decide if they had been met. If they had, we could set new goals. If they had not, we could figure out reasons for why they were not completed. We could then come up with a new plan to help become proficient at the goals. Each week during the trimester, we could evaluate our progress just like we have been doing in this class. I could have my students complete the work on a Google Document so that I could easily monitor their weekly progress and offer suggestions. These are just a few ideas on how I could help my students become proficient with the NET-S and the NET-T guidelines.

GAME Plan Update 8/6/10

I have learned that introducing social networking and collaboration tools can be a good way to get students involved in their learning. My current goal is to use new Internet tools at least 9 times throughout the course of the year. I plan on using a wiki and a blog this year to improve my classroom activities. I would like to use a blog page with my students to open up a discussion using all of the students I teach rather than the usual in class discussion between 30 students. I really want to engage some of my non-talkers in this type of interaction. I am always curious about everyone's ideas. I think wikis are pretty cool also. My unit plan engages students to use wikis to develop a plan to solve a PBL. I look forward to presenting these activities in class.

Until I get some students to teach, I do not plan on changing my goals. I plan on continuing my task of improving my knowledge of upcoming technology tools to be used in class. The best way I learn how to improve my use of technology is to actually try them out in a lesson. I jot down what I like and dislike about the tools. I look for possible problems in my current teaching situation. I then edit my plans to improve them for the next lesson. I really look forward to trying out my new skills in a couple of weeks.

GAME Plan Update 7/29/10

How effective were your actions in helping you meet your goals?

So far, I have been learning all about new web sites that can be used in my History class. This week's text in chapter 13 gives me a number of web sites to use to find primary documents and information for my students to research during a problem based activity. These sites include Library of Congress, Do History, History Matters, and The History Inquiry project. I am current finding plenty of technology tools to be used in my classroom. I will have no problem implementing a new technology tool in the 9 lessons I plan on creating this year for my classroom. I feel I am right on track with my goals.

What have you learned so far that can help you in your teaching practice?

I have learned about a number of teaching strategies to promote creative thinking and authentic lessons. I feel very comfortable with my understanding of inquiry based activities, Problem based activities, and the different assessments to be used to create authentic lessons. I am constantly think of how I can incorporate more of these types of lessons into my current curriculum.

What do you still have to learn? What new questions have arisen?

I would like to improve on creating actual inquiry based activities and problem based activities. I need to spend some time reviewing my curriculum and developing these lessons. I have thought of ways to implement quick 1 day lessons in my classroom. An idea I had was to create a problem using a real student based issue that is directly related to a past historical event. I would allow the students to come up with solutions to the problem. Later, I would review their solutions in class. Discuss the relationship between their solutions and the actual events solutions. I would then have my students take a virtual tour of the event to gain further knowledge of the event.

What new questions have arisen?

Has anyone found good web sites that give more examples of actual problem based activities used in different content areas? I would love to see more examples in my content area.


How will you adjust your plan to fit your current needs?

My current needs are being met. I may adjust my plan to include weekly checks to make sure I am track to give a new lesson with in ever 4 weeks. I may also need to find times to sit down specifically for planning without interruptions from other colleagues.

Goals Update 7/22

This week, I am in the process of evaluating new internet tools. A number of people have sent me links to some pretty good resources. I am working through each link. I also have been going back through my delicious account (mrwright40) to review some tools I have gathered from the past that have never been used in my class. I do not plan on modifying my GAME plan at this time. Currently, I have several lesson plan ideas to work towards my goals. I have a flip camera recreation of a folk song activity. I have a Civil War and Ellis Island virtual tour. I have a group persuasive essay plan to be used with Google Docs. I have a Voicethread activity to be used with an upcoming field trip. I am also practicing working with prezi.com and animoto. I would like to use these in my classroom. I have a number of cartoon creation links on my delicious account that I am tinkering around with for upcoming lessons. I do not have any new questions that come to mind at this point.

Carrying out my Personal GAME Plan

Recently, I spent some time thinking about the types of technology tools I would like my students to be using in my classroom. I have knowledge of several tools that I have found useful for classroom instruction. Some of the tools I might consider to help me carry out my game plan are voicethreads, bubbl.us, prezi.com, blogger, animoto, podcasts, Google Docs, Google Earth, Virtual Tours, and teacher tools found at the Discovery Education web site. I have found it very convenient to collect tools as I come across them in my delicious account to be reviewed for later use. Has anyone found any sweet tools that middle school age kids might be interested in using for projects? This week's resources discuss giving kids options to complete assignments. I would like to try to be open minded about the ways my students will achieve their learning goals on my GAME plan activities.

I will need some additional information before moving forward with my GAME plan. I need to begin gaining a better understanding of the insides and outs of each learning tool to be used in my upcoming lessons. I also need to begin looking at my future content and start planning the first trimester lessons. Another task to focus on will be teacher paperwork like directions, hardcopy activity instructions, web postings, and discussion notes.

Other than thinking about possible lesson plan options or technology tools, I have not moved rapidly forward on my GAME plan. In the course of the next few weeks, I will begin to get back into school teacher mode. I hope to start pre-planning same activities that will fall right into place with the goals I would like to improve upon.

My Personal Game Plan 7/8

The two indicators I would like to improve on throughout the course of the next school year would be the following:

a. design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to
promote student learning and creativity.

d. model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze,
evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.

The GAME Plan

Goals:

I would like to be able to successfully integrate at least 3 relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity during each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

I would like to be able to model and facilitate the effective use of the digital tools before and during the the 3 relevent learning experiences to be created for each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

Take action:

I need to identify 9 digital tools that can be used during each relevant activity.

I need to become very familiar with each tool.

I need to evaluate which lessons these experiences will be the most useful for implementation.

I need to design plans to model and facilitate the effective use of each tool chosen.

I need to create a checklist and a rubric to be used during each activity to insure that each goal is being met.

Monitor:

I will need to make sure I have at least 3 lessons developed using a digital tool and modeling each tool at the beginning of each trimester. Independent professional development time will be the best times to create these activities.

I will use the checklists and rubrics during each lesson involving the digital experiences to monitor my progress.

I will have to monitor if problems are occurring that don't help me meet my goals.

Evaluate

I need to review the checklists and rubrics after each lesson to determine overall success of each goal.

If my goals have not been met after each trimester, I need to make changes to each lesson plan to insure success during the next application.

I will determine what went right and what went wrong after each digital and modeling lesson. I will make the necessary changes to improve the lesson.

Course Reflection 6/27/2010

While learning in the past eight weeks, I have had many new revelations about teaching new literacy skills and the direction I would like to see my teaching practices progress. The most striking revelation I had about teaching new literacy skills would be how my students would be more hands on using this style of learning. The knowledge and experience gained in this course will influence my teaching practices going forward. One professional development goal I would like to pursue that builds upon my learning during this course and develops my own literacy or technology skills would be to work with other teachers in my department to create several quality inquiry based lessons to use with our current curriculum.
The idea that kept popping up in my head while creating my inquiry based lesson plan was how I was becoming the facilitator while the students were becoming the educators. I like this transfer of power. I constantly wonder if my students are learning and retaining the information. This style of learning puts more in the hands of the students. By the end of an inquiry based unit, a student should be able to tell you the ends and outs of their original questions. This style of learning helps free teachers up to spend more time assessing rather than presenting. One area I could really use some improvement on would be giving quality comments to students. This style helps free me up to give each student proper feedback.
The knowledge and experience gained in this course will influence my teaching practices going forward. After creating a successful inquiry based lesson, I gained confidence to create new lessons based on my current curriculum. I would like to add a few of these lessons during each major theme used during the course of a school year. I really learned a lot about assessment tools that could be used while each student is developing their understanding of specific concepts. I intend on using more checklists, conferences, and final activities during lessons in my classroom.
One professional development goal I would like to pursue that builds upon my learning in this course and develops my own information literacy or technology skills would be to work with other teachers in my department to create several quality inquiry based lessons to use with our current curriculum. While creating the inquiry based unit during this course, I felt like a kid on a bike with training wheels. I was never quite sure if I was doing it right until I got feedback from the professor. Now, I feel like I can ride the bike without the training wheels. I feel comfortable creating another lesson that fits my classroom curriculum. My first step would be to approach my department during upcoming in-services. I plan on passing on the information I have learned in this course. I hope to use ideas like how inquiry based learning puts more power in the hands of the students, they retain more doing this type of learning, and this style opens up more time for creating teacher feedback. I hope to get at least two others to join me in creating quality lessons for the future. I will make my lesson created in this class available to my colleagues. I plan on using my time during upcoming in-services to develop new plans with my colleagues to be used this next school year.
The past eight weeks have really helped me understand a new type of teaching that can really improve learning in my classroom. I hope to spend less time presenting information in the future and more time giving quality feedback to my students. Right now, my confidence level is really up for creating more quality inquiry based lessons. I hope to rope a few of my colleagues into developing more inquiry based plans to help add our students and our classrooms.

Panoramio City Discussion

Please answer one of the following questions:

Reg.- What impressed you most about the cities you toured today in class?


Honor's- What types of information can you infer about the particular city that you toured today?

Final Reflection

After reviewing my "Personal Theory of Learning," I realized that I could make a few changes to my current theory. This course has made me see the importance of all the learning theories. Each theory plays it's role in understanding how kids learn. I will continue to try to make my classroom lessons involve all the learning theories. I plan to incorporate more lessons using technology correctly. This course has helped me understand that just throwing technology into a lesson is not effective. Using technology to enhance the learning experience is effective. I want to teach my students about the new tools I learned in this class, so they can use them to learn about new information in the future. I would like to incorporate the instructional strategies learned from this class into my classroom. Using a variety of strategies will help the students learn new material in a number of ways. This will help keep up the interest level in the lesson.

I have began to use VoiceThread in my classroom. I really enjoyed how simple it was to use. I believe my students will have fun creating products using this tool. About a month ago, I used bubbl.us in my class. The kids really liked it. They had so much fun creating their own personal bubble. It really helped them organize their thoughts. One student asked me if he could use it on the state test. I had to tell him no. All of these tools allow students to create examples of their learning quickly and easily. These tools give the students a chance to learn and have fun, while creating evidence of their learning.

I have two long term goal changes I would like to make to my instructional practice. The first one is to allow more opportunities for my kids to create using the technology. I hope to become a little more hands off in my class. I wish to be a facilitator rather than the primary source of information. My other goal is to continue learning about new technology tools to incorporate into my classroom. The tools I have learned about help make learning fun. I hope to use these tools to keep my students interested in learning.

My VoiceThread

Here is the link to my VoiceThread activity. I definitely have room to improve, but I really enjoyed working on this activity.

http://www.voicethread.com/share/890000/

Cooperative learning compared to the Social Learning Theories

Cooperative learning relates very closely to the social learning theories discussed in this week's lesson. Cooperative learning is when students work together to complete a task (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). The social learning theories also suggest that learning occurs when students are working on a product while collaborating with others (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). I explored a few examples of social networking such as face book and twitter. These sites offer both examples of creating a product and collaborating with others. The only problem is ,in most cases, both of these actions are not happening at the same time. I could be missing the actual collaboration all together. I guess I can see adding suggestions to someones social problem online as a problem based activity.

Some of the collaboration tools on the other hand do allow a product to be made while collaboration is occurring. Google Docs, creating multimedia, web quests with partners, and shared calendars allow students to gather information together and create a product. At the end of each application, students are asked to create a product while working with each other. I continue to find the amount of tools on the web to help teachers in the classroom to be amazing. I look forward to learning more.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program eight. Social Learning Theories [Motion
picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with
classroominstruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Constructivist/Constructionist Learning

This week's exercises on constructivist/constructionist learning theories seem to relate to the learners that learn best by doing. I notice a major focus being on activities that put the student in charge of their learning. Many of my students perform best when they are doing or creating something.

I enjoyed reading about problem-based learning. As a Social Studies teacher, I spend time working with actual world issues. I always enjoy giving kids activities that require them to work together to solve a world problem. Recently, we discussed the loss of animal life in Thailand due to population growth. I had my students come up with a plan to help save animals and meet the growing population needs for survival. My students like assignments where they think they are helping. In the future, my students could use a number of spreadsheets with charting and graphing capabilities to display their research. My students could use a wiki or Google Docs to help collaborate on their plans away from school. Google Earth and Panoramio seem to be good tools for students to get visuals to help them explain their solutions. There are so many tools that help students enhance there knowledge gained from particular assignments.

Project based activities are also great. My students just finished presentations on a Civil War topic. Along with virtual tours from last week, they have been researching and creating presentations for class. My students had a choice on their topic and a choice on how to present them to their classmates. Many students used powerpoints. I had a few create videos and display them on Youtube. I would think using other tools like Google Docs to create surveys would be good for projects and presentations. Making my students in charge of their learning as well as their peers put a higher value on the assignment. My students really did a nice job because others were counting on them. The creating piece really helps store the information for later recall.

Strategies and Cognitive Learning Theory

The instructional strategies described in the resources I explored this week correlate with the principles of the cognitive learning theory. The cognitive learning theory is all about how people receive, store, and remember information (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). Several of this week's strategies would really help with this process. Below are a few of the strategies discussed in this week's learning that I can think of that correlate with the principles of the cognitive learning theory.

Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers:

Cues, questions, and advanced organizers really help students begin the information storing process. After viewing this week's material, I noticed several of the ideas mentioned have to do with opening the door to learning (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). Using essential questions on inspiration helps kids begin the storage process (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). Students use the essential questions kind of like a warm-up. This question helps kids get their minds in the right place for learning. Cues work to help students activate prior knowledge (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). The advanced organizers discussed in this chapter help students get visuals of text information (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). Webs created by inspiration would allow students to make connections to other meaningful concepts (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

Summarizing and Multimedia:


The chapter on summarizing and multimedia really discusses tools that can be used to help students turn short term ideas into long term knowledge. While reading this section, I really got the impression that using tools like Discovery Education and Google Video would give students images to go a long with the key concepts (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). These visuals would then help students make a more concrete connection.

Concept Mapping Tools:


I really enjoyed using the concept mapping tools this week. I used bubbl.us. I think it is amazing how kids can actually make mental and physical connections using computer tools. I know using the concept of the web is an old idea, but using this concept with a computer tool will really help improve excitement for a particular topic. If the students are allowed to be a part of the creation of an idea, that idea will stick (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). The memory of creating these maps through technology tools will help students store the information better.



References


Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program five. Cognitive Learning Theory [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroominstruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Behaviorism in Practice

This week, in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, I explored two instructional strategies that embed technology: “Reinforcing Effort” and “Homework and Practice.” See below to review my thoughts on the strategies discussed in this week’s lesson. I will also attempt to relate the behaviorist learning theory to these strategies.

“Reinforcing Effort”

I found this section to reinforce some of the life lessons discussed in my classroom throughout the year. I spend large amounts of time explaining to kids what they put into their education is what they will get out of their education. I liked how the beginning of this section talks about how one’s effort is controlled entirely by them (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

At the beginning of this school year, I developed a score sheet that kept track of my student’s work habits. The data was all recorded by the students. Each week, I used their scores to give them a work habits grade in the grade book. I had trouble continuing this strategy because of the amount of paper being used to compile the data. I found many of the kids to be dishonest, when tracking their behaviors. I decided to go to a spreadsheet that I could use to keep track. After review this section, I realize the importance of students actually gathering the data. The effort rubric and the excel spreadsheets seem to be good tools to have students use to keep track of their effort (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). These methods are also quicker and paperless. I like the idea of making them accountable for recording their effort. I also found the section discussing the importance of comparing data to be valuable. I can see how kids would want to improve if they saw their data compared with their peers.

I believe this section is related to the behaviorist theory. Punishment and reinforcement are two parts to the behaviorist theory (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008). I can see how students comparing their data from week to week would fit into these parts. After students review their weekly scores, they can reflect on their actions each week. If they displayed positive effort, it would show in their data. If they displayed negative effort, it would show in their data. Students could then use this reflection to help mold their future efforts.

“Homework and Practice”

This section helped remind me that I could be doing a better job of commenting on assignments. It also showed me some technology tools I can use for future assignments. I currently use Google docs, excel, discovery education, and a couple more mentioned in this section. I learned about the features word has to offer. I also liked the idea of using power points to create games (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). I get tired of the same old PowerPoint presentation. This seems to be a way for kids to learn and have fun at the same time.

The first part of this section relates to the behaviorist theory. I see how commenting on homework assignments helps reinforce positive behaviors and ideas from students (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). If I want my students to continue their good practices, I need to tell them which ones I enjoy. I also see how exposing students to materials numerous times reinforces content knowledge (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). This relates to the behaviorist theories.

This Week’s Technology

This week’s lesson has given me some examples of new technology I can use to improve my current methods of tracking effort and creating up to date assessment experiences. These technologies help kids create products quicker while still learning the concepts. Students using spreadsheets to track their effort can lead to several visuals of how behaviors can improve or deteriorate because of their actions. They can use this data to make improvements. I also see how the examples of homework assignments using technology can improve a student’s knowledge on a topic. The technology helps them work faster and more creatively while still reinforcing concepts to make them more concrete.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program four. Behaviorist Learning Theory
[Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom
instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.