Throughout this course, I will be exploring technology and how it can fit into my classroom, providing a seamless integration between the content and technology. In the NETS-T standards for technology, I believe I can improve my approach on many of the standards, but there are two in particular that I need to become more comfortable with addressing with my students in my classroom.
1 - Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility - As an English teacher, I know the importance of citing information correctly and giving credit to author's when it is due, and in the middle school classroom, it is particularly important to stress the importance of being a responsible consumer of digital information. It is very easy to simply highlight and drag to copy information from the internet, and just teaching the consequences of plagiarism isn't enough. For this reason, I would like to model responsible use of digital materials for my students. When I use resources other than my own, I will continually give credit where it is due, and when students are researching or collecting and information, they will always be encouraged to cite sources (even pictures!). Lessons on the importance of being a responsible citizen will saturate units focusing on the collection of information. To monitor my progress, I will monitor and evaluate my progress through discussions with students on a regular basis. If they are aware and capable of voicing their throughts and opinions on these topics, then they are learning to be responsible and ethical digital citizens.
2 - Model Digital Age Work and Learning - For this standard, I would like to focus specifically on commicating relevant information and ideas effectively to students and parents and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats. Currently, the only way I communicate digitally with parents, students, and peers is through email. I would like to try to communicate with each of these groups in other, more sophisticated and interesting ways. My action will be to set up a blog or other online collaborative tool to use with parents. This will allow us to communicate with each other in a different setting while also including others in the conversation. To monitor this goal, I will make sure I am keeping up with the blog, updating it and participating in discussions with parents. To evaluate this goal, I will keep in touch with parents to see how effective the blog was and what I can do to make it more effective and better.
Bethanne,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is important at keeping technology relevant. I wonder how much I do that sometimes. I also like your idea of having a blog. I've found that the blog isn't just for the parents, but also the students. I post homework assignments on the blog and the the kids completely rely on it. They are much better at reading the instructions than listing to me and remembering it.
One thing I might recommend that my wife does with her class blog is to go to www.vistaprint.com and get some of the free business cards. Put your blog address or class website on there and hand them out to parents at open house and conferences. I don't recommend, however, putting your personal contact info on there. I would keep it all with the school.
Brett
Brett -
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love VistaPrint! What a great idea-- I will definitely have to implement this next year.
I think the blog would make it a little more interesting that the homework site we have available through our school. Plus, the blog also allows for commenting, which as we know, can be very beneficial for the students. It's always nice to have the ooportunity to start a discussion with the class.
Bethanne,
ReplyDeleteYour plan to use a blog as a collaborative tool between parents, students and peers is a great idea. You can also use your blog to develop the writing skills of your 7th grade language students with prompts. I teach science and getting my students to wrtie is not always easy ....I think using a blog and posting their writing would be an excellent way to motivate them to do quality work. Good luck with your GAME Plan.
Bethanne,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it is so important to teach students how to use the information they find on the internet in a responsible way. That is one of my goals for this year. I like how you mentioned even citing pictures. I have done that with the powerpoints I use in class to model for my students that everything they use from the internet should be cited.
As far as the blog is concerned, one of the teachers on my team uses a blog for her classroom and it is an effective tool for parents to see what is being covered each day in class and it also great for students who are absent to see what they missed. She also uses it to upload additional activities to enrich the content she is teaching in the classroom.
Kara
Richard - This year I am the technology teacher, and I decided to do a practice run with a lot of the types of technology we learned in our classes. Blogging was the first thing I tried. I had each student make their own account; however, I found that writing in the blog every other day made the blogs and comments to the blogs nearly unmanageable. I have to figure out an easy and efficient way to monitor all comments -good and bad- going on the blogs. The kids did like to use the blogs though! So that was an added bonus.
ReplyDeleteKara - That is exactly how I was thinking of using the blog!
Bethann,
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it is a task to manage all of the post and make sure they are up-to-speed with expectations.