Carrying Out my Game Plan
In order to develop my skills with designing and developing digital age learning experiences and assessments, my first action is to assess my current skills. This week, I reviewed table 2.1 in chapter one of our text book. I focused on the performance profiles related to my role as a kindergarten teacher. I am confident in my ability to locate information, evaluate the resources, and present the information in multiple literacy forms. I am really comfortable with PBL and inquiry based lessons, however, I am not familiar enough with many of the kindergarten appropriate digital age tools that can enhance student learning. For example, I want to create a classroom wiki but never have. I love digital story telling but do not know how to create one.
This class offers many opportunities to help me get some much needed training and experience with integrating these types of tools in my daily lessons. In addition, I will need to spend time playing with free software downloads and reading tutorials to gain knowledge and confidence with using new technologies. Some of my peers have earned their masters in special education so I hope to work with them to become better at designing UDL lessons.
Also,I plan to keep a simple journal during week 4 to help me track how much time I spend on learning. I will include all work for Walden as well as addtional time spent on locating new resources to expand my ability to provide digital age learning experiences.
As this first game plan evaluation indicates, I still have a lot to learn about integrating technology in my classroom but I remain determined to do what it takes in order to provide a learning environment that suits all my students’ needs.
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Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI think that any good teachers always has a lot to learn with technology because the possibilities are infinite. The digital story telling is a great idea for a kindergarten class. You could even have the students dress up as characters, take photos of them, and then use the pictures of them as the digital story. I bet the kindergarten students would love this and it would help them build literacy skills. If you had a class website, you could put your projects on the website and then parents would log into the website and get use to using it.
Personally, I don't see the benefits of a wiki for a kindergarten class, because the students aren't really writing yet. The only way this might be valuable, is if you use it for the parents as a source for information and suggestions in your classroom.
Charles
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI think the using digital storytelling or a wiki would be a great idea with your kindergarten students. However, I completely understand you say that you haven't done it with your students because you don't know how to use these tools yourself. I also want to incorporate wikis and digital storytelling in my classroom, but don't feel comfortable enough with these tools yet. I plan to continue to practice using them and creating samples of my own before I use them with my students. I believe that knowing how to use them before teaching students how to use them is extremely important. I think that your first time using these two tools you should create one wiki or one digital story as a class.
Good luck as you continue to research and learn about these two tools. I am looking forward to coming back to your blog to read about your experience.
Ashley
You made an admirable first step for accomplishing your GAME plan, which is honestly evaluating yourself and your skills. It sounds like you have a good foundation of information, so you at least know what you would like to accomplish with your students. I can see how kindergarten could be a challenge because you, the teacher, have to do most of the technological aspect of the projects. I think that a class wiki or blog is a great place to start because you can do a lot of sharing with the school community with that. You can post weekly updates about what you are doing in class, and you can also include pictures or videos of the activities. Digital storytelling could be a lot of fun with your students' artwork. Depending on how your classroom is set up, you can have students bring up their pieces for the story one at a time and maybe even record their voices.
ReplyDeleteKelly,
ReplyDeleteI think keeping a journal is a great way to have personal accountability.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that you are well on your way to carrying out your GAME Plan. I also teach kindergarten students, and I am not familiar with the appropriate digital-age tools either. This class is providing opportunities for training and experience for integrating these tools. You are not alone in feeling you have alot to learn about integrating technology. Your determination will pay-off!