Technology survey

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Using the GAME plan process with students

The GAME plan can be used quite easily to help the students to develop their technology skills. One way to establish ways students could communicate and collaborate with each other as by using collaborative websites. They could monitor different collaboration websites and determine which website would work best for them. They could then use a blog to evaluate and extend their thinking. Another example would be for the students to develop a GAME plan for critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. They would take what they already know about collaboration and start on a problem-based project which would require them to set a goal of identifying problems in a particular area. Then they would take action to find out more about the problem and what could be done. The students and the teacher would continue to monitor their progress through the use of the blog. They can also evaluate the information they collect to see if they need to look beyond the initial problem to finish their project. As students are working on the GAME plan for critical thinking, problem solving and decision making they will also incorporate the research and information fluency standard as well. The standard states “students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate and use information”. (National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T), 2008). So one GAME plan can incorporate more then one technology standard at a time plus it would also combine the technology standards with our state learning standards for science.

National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

More of my GAME plan

As I continue on with my GAME plan I am still trying to collect my websites. I have found some while doing work for my Master’s Degree. Right now we are looking for interactive websites and I was pleased to find out that Wikispaces is no longer blocked at our school. I had set one up last year but then a couple weeks later it was blocked. I was very frustrated because I wanted to use it for classroom collaboration. An online collaboration website our school is using is Schoology.com. In reading about how to best integrate science into the classroom it states that part of it depends on the teachers way of communicating with students, parents, administrators and community members through technology and print. (Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P.,2009). Schoology is an interactive site which the students can go and access a teacher’s webpage in order to work on assignments with students or teachers. The school is hoping to be able to make it available to parents as well in order to see what their child is doing in class. Our media specialist worked very hard at keeping this from getting blocked because she feels this is a great way to encourage 21st century learning skills.

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Continued evaluation of my GAME plan

Another evaluation of my GAME plan

As I begin to start my lesson for my graduate school project I realized that many of the websites which I have gathered will work well for my problem-based project. I already have several environmental, governmental and science websites which will help with the final project. One observation I am making is that the list of websites I am gathering will be helpful for projects I have planned this school year.

What I want to do now is locate interactive organizational diagrams which can help my students to organize their thoughts and information before working on a final product. The students could use a website which incorporates a web-type organizational diagram while doing research on the Gulf Oil Spill. They will make the oil spill the center issue and then use the outer circles to add the rest of the information. My students have not had experience using the online webs so we would have to do one together prior to the activity. This way the students will not feel too overwhelmed when they work on their project.