Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

My GAME plan is progressing nicely and both my students and I are making progress. The main focus of my GAME plan is to designing digital learning experiences while promoting digital responsibility.  The foundation of my plan is based on my interest to use of social forms of technology in the classroom. So far I have create an Edmodo group for each of my classes and students have completed several assignments online. In order to gather information on my students and their technology usage, students has completed both a technology data sheet and a technology survey. Thanks to the wonderful suggestions of my classmates I was able to conduct this information quickly by using the online service of www.surverymonkey.com .  The purpose of this was to estimate how many students have access to technology outside of class and what forms of technology students are interested in using.  The good news is that the majority of my students have access to technology outside of school and show interest in collaborating with their classmates online which encourages me to move forward with my plan.

I do believe that in order for my GAME plan to be truly effective a slight modification needs to be made. In my opinion Edmodo is a great social education site to use with students. My students are communicating with me online outside of school and making great academic progress. However, I need to modify my lessons and activities where students communicate with each other.  My desire is that students will become self-directed learners by using Edmodo to learn from and with their classmates (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). I am currently working on creating discussion assignments similar to our discussion board assignments where students have to respond to a post and their classmates post. This will not only create classroom communication but critical thinking skills as well.  These types of assignments would create a digital community and further the integration of technology by requiring students to conduct research and develop thought out responses to the content being taught (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009). The feedback students receive from their classmates will promote collaboration, communication, and perhaps more questions and research which in turn promotes effective learning.

So far I have learned that my students like Edmodo and are currently using Edmodo in several of their other classes. I also have learned how to grant parents access to Edmodo so they can view the assignments and the grades of their child. I have found that this is home and school collaboration is a great advantage to my GAME plan because parents will check their child grades and ensure that their classwork is completed before their child using the computer and Internet for “social reasons”.  I have questions about what other forms of “social” technology I can use with my students. I also have questions about how my colleagues and I can collaborate with our students through the use of Edmodo. I am constantly promoting collaboration in my classroom but I think it would be interesting to create a cross-curriculum project for students to complete.

I am excited about my ideas and the progress I am making on my plan. It is obvious that I have some planning, designing, and collaborating with my colleges to complete. I would love to start this project soon. Any suggestions, advice, or feedback from my classmates would be greatly appreciated.

References:

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.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Author.


L. Yancey

4 comments:

  1. I will be starting my use of Edmodo next week, and so I am very glad to read about how successful you have been with it. I do not plan to use it as extensively as you have, but will be using it for writing prompts and continued conversation throughout the reading of a novel. I agree with your point that students learn from the feedback of their peers. They pay more attention to their friends and what their friends think than their teachers:) One of the draws of this site is the "social networking" aspect.

    I am curious about the collaborative nature of this site. I have tried to use wikis when I put kids into groups, but they were not interested in this tool. It was easier for them to text each other:) Next I tried Google Groups, and that was a little better. They had to create a slide show on Google. They liked that and the project went well.

    My next attempt (after this class ends) is to try a WedQuest. I have loved scavenger hunts and if I could create one via a WebQuest, I think that might be an effective plan.

    Good luck with the rest of your plan! It sounds great.

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  2. As others have stated throughout this course, Edmodo seems like a terrific tool for usage in the classroom. Though I have yet to use it, it truly does seem like a fantastic tool to get students to communicate with each other, and to generate discussions about open-ended response questions. Allowing the students to get and give feedback can certainly generate some very interesting class discussions. I am interested to see how students from all levels perform with this technology, as I feel as though it certainly can benefit all types of learners.

    The other part of your post here that really grabbed my attention was your idea about cross-curricular planning. I say this, because I am in the beginning stages of creating one myself. The science teacher in my 'cluster' and I both assign rather large projects towards the end of the school year. My project involves the students doing a report on a country, while hers involves an animal native to parts of the world. We are trying to come up with creative ways to use technology in this project. I am very curious to see exactly how your ideas progress, and would love to brainstorm with you about your ideas.

    I am very glad to see that you are still as excited about your GAME plan as before. You seem to be making some very good progress!

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  3. Tasha,
    It sounds like you have a great start to your game plan. It sounds like Edmaodo group is keeping your students engaged and that it might be getting the parents involved in their students. I tried to use the survey monkey, but for some reason I had trouble with it. I think that my students were not interested in taking the survey and for some of them they did not have the internet access in order to complete the survey, but they talk about what one of their friends said on face book the night before. I think that Edmaodo group is appealing to the students, because it looks more like the social network that they like to be on and they can communicate with their pears. Accorning to Connamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009) while we can certainly learn many tings by reading textbooks and by observing others complete a task, the most natural for of learning involves active, hands on, concrete experience. I think that the Edmaodo group provides that hand on experiences that the students need.
    Are you going to have the students turn in their classroom assignments through Edmaodo?
    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.

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  4. Latasha,

    I am glad that your GAME plan is going so well and you are having no issues with the implementation and research needed to properly execute it into your classroom. I looked up the tool Edmodo and it seems like it would be beneficial in the classroom. Have you thought of extending any of the discussions to Twitter for your students to break free of the confines of Edmodo? I say this because I wonder how it would look to have students use both tools in a discussion setting--since one of them is more educational driven then the other. But you are right that students do learn better when interacting with their peers, whether that is face to face or on a social media website.

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