Technology Based Lesson Planning

For our last tech assignment it was our task to create a lesson that would incorporate media and technology. I decided to work under the ITSE standard 1 which states, “facilitate and inspire learning and creativity.” To me this standard states that teachers prepare learning tasks that allow students to use technology as their creative outlet and a space in which they can create an individual project. I think that this is a really important standard for teachers to reach for in the realm of tech because there are so many different avenues to choose from!!

Technology Based Lesson

I believe that my lesson fulfills this standard and is evidence of that  because it pushes students to use their creativity and use pictures to illustrate a narrative that they have already written. I believe that his is a way students can bring their writing to life while using technology as their creative outlet! Each story would have its own flare and turns into something that students can be really proud of.

After writing this lesson, doing a little demo and reflecting about how it went There are a couple changes that I think I would make to enhance efficiency and prevent student confusion, but there were also sections that I really liked! One section that i did really like was my assessment section. Throughout this lesson I used informative assessments that told me if students were grasping the idea of beginning, middle, and end. We also identified as a class the usefulness of pictures alongside a narrative story. We identified as a class with the read aloud and modeled illustrating when modeling storybird. During both of these sections I used the I do, we do, you do model assessing student’s abilities towards the objectives. I formally assessed students by looking at their beginning, middle, end worksheet  sheet as well as grading their story on storybird and illustrations using the 3 rubrics I designed. This lesson gave me four data points to assess where my students were and allowed for student voice as they filled out the exit ticket to finish up the lesson.

Another thing that I really liked about the lesson was the media that I tried out! I learned about all of these resources through this class and it was cool to put them to use! During this lesson was able to use tech and media throughout the lesson in different ways. I was able to revisit a brainstorm technique we had previously learned and put it on a screen. This website allowed students to create their own kind of brainstorm and pushed them to create their own path rather than using one that they had seen before. I was able to utilize a storytelling website to help students see pictures as they listened to find the different parts of a story. Utilizing this tool allowed me to stop the story and talk about what was happening while still having an image to spur students interest about what was happening. This was also something that the students really liked because of how large the story was and it is always nice to hear someones elses voice once and a while, so it provided a natural transition. The main use of tech was the use of storybird. This was a really cool piece of media to use because students were able to be creative and create something that they were really proud of. This application also allowed students to share their stories to one another as well as provided me with another great artifact of learning.

There were also some parts of my lesson that I would definitely change. I would possibly have only one student write during the bubblus brainstorm at the beginning of the lesson because of how hard it is to write on the whiteboard, but make sure that all students are involved verbally. I would also have changed the sequence of the lesson and had students make the storybird, then actually write their story. It was very hard to find pictures that could go along with the story that  was  already created. I think that this switch would still provide the same amount of creativity and would even help students in the brainstorming process if they had a base of pictures to build off of. I would have also changed the typing portion of the lesson. I would have either taken it completely out or Possibly had an older class come and help students type their stories in storybird because first grade typing is very very slow. Lastly, I would want to Find a way to connect the audio recording to the story. Initially I thought storybird did this but I ended up using a basic audio recorder and would have to save each story individually and play it while clicking through each students story.

Overall, I really learned a lot from this project and have definitely expanded my technological resources. I hope that I continue to challenge myself in this way and provide the best and diverse learning experience for my students.

ISTE Standard 5-Legal and Ethical Behavior in the World of Technology

This week we focused on ISTE standard 5 which states, Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.” To me this standard is saying that as a citizen students are able to understand cultural norms of technology as well as are able to use it appropriately while being aware of the dangers and errors that can be made. While working to understand this standard I identified with section A of this standard that states, “Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.” I think that it is important for students to abide by this part of the standard because of the dangers that a student can fall into while searching the web. It is also important that as a teacher to put precedence on this because as their teacher you are going to be put under a magnify glass if your student falls into trouble under your supervision.

In hopes to teach my students this standard, this week I wanted to know how to teach my student’s about the correct use of technology as well as look to see if there were resources to teach it! I began my search by reading mandatory class readings to help point me in a direction to find a beneficial resource for my question. I read an article that talked about what digital citizenship was. This article helps unpack standard 5 because it gives examples of what it looks like to practice legal and ethical behavior as well as define all of the different parts of interaction with technology. I liked how this resource gave a definition of what they thought digital citizenship was. I also liked how it gave all of the different parts of citizenships with examples of each.

http://teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/digital-citizenship-the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/

I think that the chart that they use for this would be something beneficial to show to students to spark conversation about what is appropriate and safe while searching the Internet. This article lead me to a different blog post on the same site about BYOT to school policies and what was appropriate. This article talked about implementing a “bring your own technology” programs and the rules that went with them. Although I wasn’t really interested in a complete BYOT programs I did like the guidelines that were created for technology by the students. This spurred my idea of as a class creating our own technology rules as a class after learning about the dangers and benefits of the world wide web.

http://www.teachthought.com/uncategorized/11-sample-education-byot-policies-to-help-you-create-your-own/

I believe that after learning what standard 5 looks like through making commutative class rules, as well as discussing the chart seen above students will be able to show their understanding through a resource that I found called netsmartz.

http://www.netsmartz.org/StudentKit

Netsmartz is a teacher and student project kit that lets students teach other students about how to act responsibly while using technology and how to be responsible with the information that it gives you! I believe that this would help me as a teacher make sure students understand what it means to be technologically safe as well as gives me an idea on how to continue to teach upon standard 5! I think this would be an excellent resource to show competence of standard 5 and answered my question of the week about guidance materials!

 

Course Articles:

TeachThought (Accessed 2016). The definition of digital citizenship. http://teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/digital-citizenship-the-future-of-learning/the-definition-of-digital-citzenship/

Supporting Article:

TeachThought (Accessed 2016). 11 Sample Education BYOT Policies To Help You Create Your Own. http://www.teachthought.com/uncategorized/11-sample-education-byot-policies-to-help-you-create-your-own/

Resource: Netsmartz

http://www.netsmartz.org/StudentKit

ISTE Standard 4- Critical Thinking, Project Management, and Research

This weeks standard was standard four which stated, “Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.” To me this standard says that students have the ability to use technology to begin a project, research a project, and to present a project. Within the research of a project students will use critical thinking to work through information as well as use the technological tools to help gain knowledge in the most efficient way possible. I think that this is an important skill to learn because students should be able to use the appropriate tools to begin a project or improve upon an academic skill.

This led me to my question of brainstorming. For my question this week, I wanted to find different ways that students could brainstorm when beginning a creative project. I think that this kind of graphic design could help students spur their imagination and something visual to work off of. Even if the picture or video that started a brainstorm was the same for the whole class I think it could give a beneficial start. The resource that I found to accompany this idea was the bubbl.us. I think that the bubbl.us resource would organize student’s information better than a paper version, as well as it could be very personalized and get students excited about the project they are about to approach.

In hopes to find my answer, I read Douglas Kiang’s article, “). 3 ways coding and gaming can enhance learning .” In his article he talked about how his students use graphic design and graphic coding to help students create using interactive fiction. Mr. Kiang states, “The stumbling block for most students who are trying to write their adventure game is finding or creating graphics. But for my high school students who are writing interactive fiction using a programming language called Inform 7, the “graphics” are their text descriptions. It is a meaningful demonstration of the power of words.” In his classroom he solely uses graphics to tell the stories or tell the story of the game. If this were my classroom I think that I would stem from that and try to pair it with some sort of writing. I think that the graphic creation could be a great jumping off point to dive into a story. This article didn’t really help me with my question specifically, but I did see the creative and critical thinking benefits that come from this type of project.

As I continued on to try to find a resource I found the resource of bubbl.us. This is an online resource that helps build brainstorm webs for students. I found that this could be beneficial because a teacher could have students personalize their webs as they critically think about how their project is going to be presented. They need to ask themselves how many ideas are they going to share and how many details do they need about each of these ideas. From there using bubbl.us students can build an organizer that will start their project off right. I think that this would be beneficial to students because they would have an organizational outline that they can manipulate to fit their own brainstorm. I think this will help with critical thinking because it forces them to think about project layout and it helps with project management because students have a jumping off point as well as a guiding structure containing information.

 

Resource: bubbl.us   https://bubbl.us/

 

Class Article: Kiang, D. (2014). 3 ways coding and gaming can enhance learning. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/coding-and-gaming-enhance-learning-

ISTE Standard 3- Using technology with data

This week we focused on the ISTE standard 3, which states, “Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.” This standard means to me that teachers provide access and opportunity for students to organize and evaluate data, whether it is their data or not by way of technology. This week I focused on portion D of the standard that stated “Process data and report results.” I think that this portion of the standard allows for students to process data individually and as a class using multiple technological resources.

Our trigger question for this week stated, “What are ways in which students can apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information?” That question led me to create my question of, “Is there a resource to compile class data that students can see to track class growth without singling out individual students?” For this module I wanted to see if there was a way that I could share class results to have students be able to see their own growth as a class. This would provide the opportunity to bring community to the learning environment as well as push toward a class academic goal. For answers I first turned to Dr. Wong’s article “How technology enables blended learning.” This article didn’t quite hit what I was trying to find, but did provide some new found learning that I think could be very beneficial! The article talked about a resource that enables students to take assessments, and based on their achievement level a learning path would be specifically geared told them. How is that for differentiation! The article also gave many examples of how different schools in different states are moving to blended learning models and are providing technological learning! I loved the quote that stated, “The goal is to take learning to a different level that expands beyond the four walls of the classroom”(Wong, 2014). If teachers can find a way to bring students to want to continue to learn outside of the classroom, can you imagine the progress that would happen within a classroom.

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2014/04/how-technology-enables-blended-learning

This article was inspirational and gave me motive to be one of those blended learning classrooms, but didn’t quite answer my question so I looked online to find other resources that would help answer my question more specifically. I ran into my answer by actually talking to one of my colleagues who uses Google forms to give her class quizzes. This way she can invite her class to join a quiz. They will immediately get their scores, and she can project the class averages and who got what wrong to the class later. I think that this is a really cool way gather information that engages and includes students!

https://www.google.com/forms/

I think that Google forms is a great way as a class do multiple informative assessments that lead up to a larger summative assessment. This would let the class know how they are doing while creating a common learning community. Using this as a learning activity would also fulfill the ISTE standard because students are organizing, analyzing, and computing data using technology, while testing their knowledge of learned information. It seems to me that it could be a win for everybody!

 

Resource: Google Forms https://www.google.com/forms/

Class Article: Wong, W. (2014). How technology enables blended learning. EdTech Focus on K-12. Retrieved from http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2014/04
/how-technology-enables-blended-learning

ISTE Standard 2-Student Collaboration

This week we focused on ISTE standard 2, which states, “Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.” I decided to focus on portion D of this standard. Part D says that student’s will, “Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.” To me standard two pushes students to use technology as an avenue for a different type of student collaboration that may enhance a collaborative experience. I focused in on portion D because in younger grades the main source of collaboration stems from problem solving and explaining their thinking.

Our class trigger question was, “How can students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others?” This made me think about the more specific question of, “How can I find a resource that is easy enough for students use without parent help and wouldn’t worry parents as students interact and collaborate during a learning task?” I began my exploration by reading Megan Cicconi’s article, “Vygotsky meets technology: A reinvention of collaboration in the early childhood mathematics classroom.” This article shared Vygostky’s theory about student interaction and the benefits of using online interaction. She states Vygotsky’s research and findings when it comes to online participation as well as points out the three main benefits. These benefits are, “First, they found that the virtual world allows students to complete tasks that would other-wise be improbable due to realistic constraints, including money and time…The second benefit that Antonacci et al. (2008) identified is the virtual world’s persistence and constant accessibility, which increases social interactions and therefore provides more opportunities for collaborative learning…The third benefit of utilizing virtual worlds for collaborative learning that Antonacci et al. (2008) discovered focuses on the adaptive and emergent nature of virtual worlds.”All of these benefits are not only specifically found in online collaborative learning, but are indeed met by this process!

Cicconi’s reading led me to my resource of Voki and helped me answer my question for the week. I was worried about having students be monitored while being online/ having parents feel secure as their students work collaboratively. Cicconi’s article made it clear that there are many resources that are available that teachers can manipulate depending on what to do, who can see it, and how students may and may not interact. She states that teachers may control, “student-initiated publishing and sharing, utilizing privacy controls and creating pairs, small groups, or whole group activities based on objectives and projects, and allowing students to interact through teacher-selected social network sites.” This affirmed my question of how to keep online collaboration within a safe environment. After that question was answered I was pointed to a resource by the name of Voki. This is a website that allows students to make an avatar and share their ideas through that avenue. Students can retell a story, challenge other students with word problems, and so much more. This site is student friendly and that student can only access each avatar, but the work can be shared with their classmates and teacher.

http://www.voki.com/

Overall I think that Voki as a resource, along with many others, could be teacher monitored and could provide the collaboration that standard two talks about. Technological collaboration could open up communication in a whole different way for students and if monitored and kept in a safe environment, I believe all students could flourish using digital media.

 

Resource: Voki  

http://www.voki.com/

 

Class Article: Cicconi, M. (2013). Vygotsky meets technology: A reinvention of collaboration in the early childhood mathematics classroom. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42(1), 57–65.

ISTE Standard 1- Creative Process

This week we focused on the ISTE standard 1, “Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity” To me this standard means that students are given the opportunity to expand upon the given material and redirect or share their learning in a creative and engaging way. I think that my findings from this week relate most to section c of this standard,” c. Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.” I think that my resources help students do this because of the steps that they would have to use-to-use storybird. It is important that in this process students think about what they want their end product to be, as well as the different steps they would need to take to successfully deliver that end product.

The weeks trigger question was, “How can students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology?” The word that stood out for me in this question was a creative product. I wanted to know how students could show me what they learned in a creative way using technological resources. From there I came up with my own question of, “How can I provide easy to use interactive technology to spur creative thinking in a primary elementary classroom.”

So I began my search for my answer by reading to Bob Dillon’s post “The Power of Digital Story.” After reading the article and connecting it to my internship, I found great importance in his points of “creating space for listening” and “amplify with images.” I these topics are so important for younger students because for them to be able to be creative alongside technology students need time to digest what they are seeing. I also found importance in Dillon’s point about amplifying with pictures. Student engagement and creativity can be ignited through pictures.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-power-of-digital-story-bob-dillon

I connected my question with this article resource because with my young students my resources would have to be some kind of interactive technology that isn’t super advanced or individual because of our lack of whole class computer access. These restrictions lead me to see digital story as a great option! From there I began to search digital story telling and building links and I ran into my resource, story bird.

https://storybird.com/create/ (Links to an external site.)

This website would allow students to do so many different things! As a whole group the class could look at pictures I put together and create a story themselves to match the pictures. This would spur creativity because they would have a general idea of a stories beginning, middle, and end; but would have to fill in the detail. As an individual (if resources available) students could create a story themselves and then pick out their pictures to match their stories. I think that the storybook option would be appropriate for my students because of their level of writing and reading, but to type the text into their story may take way too long. If students could read their story while going through the pictures or have their writing next to their pictures, I think it would be manageable to grade and connect to common core standards.

Storybird would allow students to show me evidence of the skill that I am teaching them. This evidence would also show the creative process, as students have to plan how they would show me their conceptual understanding of the learned skill. For example if students were learning about a stories beginning middle and end. They would have to plan how their story could show those three things. They would next have to creatively piece together a technological sequence that would show their conceptual understanding of beginning middle and end. The end product would show a student driven and creation of a piece of technological evidence showing middle beginning and end. I found that this was just one of many different easy and interactive websites that students could use to show a product of their learning. I hope to run into many more of these websites so I can continue to integrate technology as well as keep track of my student’s creative process like standard one challenges us to do!

 

Resource: Storybird

https://storybird.com/create/ (Links to an external site.)

 

Class Article: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-power-of-digital-story-bob-dillon (Links to an external site.)

Dillon, B. (2014). The power of digital story (Links to an external site.). Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-power-of-digital-story-bob-dillon

 

Content Appropriateness and Student Engagement

 

Program standard 2.2 states “Teacher’s explanation of content is appropriate and connects with students’ knowledge and experience.” To me this standard means to give students academic age level appropriate content that they can connect with on a personal level. This includes making sure that all students have the opportunity to participate and be engaged. This will ensure that teachers will recognize the examples that don’t fit their classes, and leave them by the way side. In my first grade classroom our social studies focus is families. We connected that topic with our reading essential question for the week of “How do people around the world live?” We first talked about how we thought Meridian Park was a special place. I knew this was an example that everyone could connect with. We next moved on to say why Shoreline was a special place. Again this was a topic that all students could connect to. I then asked the question if student had every lived someplace else. This stretched their thinking by making them begin to compare and contrast where they live and another place. Finally we arrived to see that different places are all very special and that these special differences make an impact on how and where a person lives. I then introduced the map project. This entailed students to draw and label a maps geographical features and put twenty special details about that place that would make it different for the people that live there.

(THIS IS FIRST GRADE WORK!! WOW!!)

I believe that this is evidence of showing appropriate context paired with knowledge and experience because of the base that we built together before starting the project, as well as the following evidence of engagement throughout the project. After building background with student experience embedded, students picked out a country book and were immediately engaged as they mapped out the similarities and differences to that country and to their own. Students used their experiences to compare to the new information that they learned about the people from their country of choice.

What I learned from this assignment that with clear concise instructions and overwhelming student engagement, students can create really amazing things. If a student can begin with themselves and then broaden out a topic they will be able to understand much easier. This project gave students the opportunity to build from a very familiar place onto something much more foreign. That scaffolding gave students the right platform to jump off of into their own learning. I think that The learning that occurred from this project entailed students reflection on where they live, students comparing their lifestyle to another’s around world, students researching and pulling out information from a nonfictional text, and a baseline understanding of creating maps. The only thing that I would change in this project would be to possibly use it as a presentation grade as well. I think that I lost an opportunity when I didn’t use a project that the students loved to practice their presentation skills.

Family Communication

Standard 7.1 reads: Communicating with Families

Teacher communicates with families about students’ progress on a regular basis, respecting cultural norms, and is available as needed to respond to family concerns. For me this standard means that the classroom teacher parents in the loop on all classroom activities, learning, as well as personal behaviors within the classroom in a timely and respectful manner. One way that I think my mentor teacher and I have kept in great communication is through our weekly homework logs as well as through our monthly newsletter. Every week we send out a homework log which lets families know what homework is coming home what night, what lessons are being taught that day, and any other special announcements that may be different from the regular weekly norms. Students take home the homework log on Mondays and return it to class on Fridays with a parent signature. This lets me know that they are receiving it and are aware what their child is learning. My mentor and I also send out a monthly newsletter. This newsletter essentially does the same thing as our homework log but on a larger scale. We explain the specific math topic that we will be focusing on that month, the different reading skills and strategies that will be covered, and what is going on in our writing and science units! We also post any school wide activities or specific class celebrations earned or field trips for the month. Lastly we also include any other special announcements that we seem to be important for our students and families.

I think that these two pieces of information are justification of competence with communicating with families because parents are always being notified of what their children are doing at school! I think that It is very important for a child’s education to be supported by their parents, and for parents to support they need to know what is going on! These handouts provide parents knowledge, volunteer opportunities, and many talking points dealing with what they are learning about in school.

From this experience I have learned how eager parents are to learn about what their students are learning. To create a relationship with a student I think that it is important to create a cohesive relationship with their parents as well. I have also learned that if parents are in constant communication there is a rarity in miscommunication between teacher and parent. It also seems like when parents know what is going on they are far more willing to volunteer in the classroom, which helps the teacher as well as excited the students. As far as student implications go, it is evident how important this kind of communication is for them because my students are only six and sometimes they can’t keep everything in track. By having their parents be so well connected with what they are doing at school students receive support at home as well as at school. A modification I would make in the future would be to the homework log. I would make a space for a weekly behavior reports. This way parents could be up to date on academics as well as a personal behavior check up.

Professional Community

Standard 8.1 states: Participating in a Professional Community

Relationships with colleagues are characterized by mutual support and cooperation. To me this standard means not only being kind and respectful to your colleagues but also putting in the effort to contribute to your staff and school. This means not only through a teachers work in the classroom, but their work within a building in general. This year I was provided with the opportunity to work with Meridian Park’s PBIS team. This experience not only immersed me within the staff very quickly, but also put me in a team setting where I could make meaning collegially relationships. During one of the meetings this year I was assigned to head the compliment card project. This was a way for teachers to give students and other teacher’s special recognition of something that they appreciated from that person. I was able to collaborate with our family advocate to determine what our purpose for these cards would be as well as implementation.

cheetah Compliments

I believe that this is evidence of emerging competence in this area because I was able to participate in a small professional team, create a material to help create a positive work atmosphere, as well as share it out to the greater staff. I believe that from my work in PBIS this year I have learned how important these break off groups are for a school community and how beneficial it is to actually participate in them. I have been able to make relationships with staff from different grade bands as well as collaborate with many paras and the special education staff. In terms of my own students learning I believe that because I was a part of PBIS team I was always able to implement our schools management techniques and be on of the first to try or implement new and exciting ideas. This helped my students continue to grow within the classroom as they followed school wide expectations and behavior policies.

My next steps to continue to better myself within this standard would be to make sure that I am on a PBIS, BLT, or other kind of school wide committee where staff comes together to collaborate and try to better their community and their student’s experiences.

 

Instructional Research

Program Standard #2 on instruction states: The teacher uses research-based instructional practices to meet the needs of all students. To me this standard simply states that teachers need to continue learning to allow for their students to learn alongside them. This is saying that the most effective teachers use, borrow, and steal from the greatest educators who have shared their resources help other teachers meet the instructional needs of their students.

This quarter in Content Methods we had the opportunity to read Teach like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that put students on the path to College. This was a resource that gives countless teaching strategies that have proven to be effective in the classroom. As a class we read through the book, from there it was up to us how we would like to use our information. Personally I saw that I was able to reflect on the strategies I already use, try new strategies acquired, and ask questions about what would work or why something may cause issues in a class.

Annotated Notes Chapter 2 and 3annotated Notes chapter 4Annotated notes chapter 8annotated notes chapter 12Annotated Notes- Chapter 6 & 7chapter 10 and 11

I think this opportunity had a huge impact on my growth in standard 2 because of all of the information I have gained, and because of the reflection that I have acquired through process. As you can see that as a class we have dove into this book. I have put in the time and effort to identify why the practices I have used have been effective and why I would like to try some of the other techniques used.

By doing this research and using the annotated note taking strategy, I do not only have written reflections of my own techniques that I have used, but I have an on going to do list of strategies that I need to try to implement. Above all else I have vastly expanded my instructional toolkit. This evidence of growth is now ongoing, as I have been checking off what works for my students and what has proven to be ineffective. I also have learned that some classes respond differently to different strategies and many classes will not be the same. This taught me that I might need to file these away and reach out for more resources to continue to grow my own education as a teacher.

Over the course of this process of research, I have learned that I still have so much to learn, not only from books but from peers as well. During our book clubs and lectures I have found such importance in the I can learn from the people around me. This is not demeaning what I have learned from a text, but having others to discuss and decipher strategies learned that come from a text has proven to be very important. I also would like to continue to do research in this manner of recording, trying what I’ve learned in the classroom, and then further reflection because it pushes me to continue to take risks as a teacher by trying new things.

 

Lemov, D. (2015). Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. an Francisco: Jossey-Bass.