EDUC-6715I-6 Reflection

There are many new and exciting ways to help our students learn, and much of that comes from the integration of technology. Technology in itself is pretty amazing but when brought into the classroom it can provide an endless array of possibilities. Our students can use their creativity while using technology, it can make an otherwise quiet students voice louder. Our students love doing new and exciting things in school and technology is dynamic and ever-changing. We can keep our students motivated to learn because of technology. Going through this course and the program as a whole has given me new tools to use in my class to help my students become more successful and involved learners.

EDUC-6714I-2 Reflection

I think that as I have gone through this course that it has brought some things back that I may have forgotten to think about when it comes to my students. It is important that we as teachers do what is best for our students. Being familiar with our students backgrounds as well as their previous successes and failures, will help us to teach our students in the most effective way. All of our students learn differently, and it is our job to find a way to help them learn. Technology can aid in DI and help to make the learnig process more efficient for our students. All of our students want to learn, it is our job to find out the best way for them to learn and teach them that way.

Course Management System

Reflection

One thing that this current course has done for me is to make me think about how I can use technology in my gym to help my students to become better learners and more excited about learning. The use of pedometers is just a beginning and one way to use technology in my classes. I think that there are many extensions that can come from using a pedometer. We can begin to chart our results using a spread sheet, we can use a flip camera to shoot video of different exercises we can do using the pedometers and post them on our website. I think that starting with something that seems so simple can lead to many other uses of technology in the gym. Not to mention that it is a great motivator for students to become more active, which is the reason we teach PE in the first place. I think that there are many useful ways to use technology in the gym. Kids are intrigued by technology, and if I can use it to gain their attention I owe it to the students to do that. As educators we need to have "a bag of tricks" that help our students to become more engaged and better learners.

Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

Our students need to be able to use technology in their lives and will continue to need to be able to use it in the future. I'm not sure that there are many jobs out there that don't use technology in some way, shape or form. I think the more we introduce and use technology with our students the better chance they have at being more successful in the future with technology. Even using and charting something that seems simple, like pedometers, I believe gives them an advantage. Students need to know how to use technology not only in school but in their everyday lives.

Revising Your GAME Plan

Making sure that our students are learning what we are trying to teach them is the most important job we have as teachers. Our students learn in different ways, and we have to make sure that we do our best to reach each and ever one of them. I am still trying to find ways to get this done. Doing this while try to integrate technology at the same time makes this an even more difficult task. I know that my students love using technology and I believe that it helps them to learn more efficiently. I want to introduce as much technology into my class as possible. One thing I have learned in this process though, is to take my time and make sure that it is technology that is helping my students learn and not just technology for technology sake. I want to make sure that I try to keep extending the learning process of my students. I think that it is important that I get feedback from my students on what they like and don't like about the technology that I am trying to introduce into my class.

Evaluating My GAME Plan Progress

As I think more and more about my "goals" for my game plan, that this will be an on going process that is ever changing. I think that I will always be growing and changing what I am doing in my class. I think that this goes for all teachers that care about their students growth and development. The use of pedometers is a PE setting can help to motivate students and can also help students with there own goal setting when it comes to fitness. I also think that using pedometers is a great way to teach our students about respect and responsibility. They have to use them in the correct way so that they will be able to be used for a while. I think that I have some good ideas on how to use pedometers but by no means do I know everything or have every idea. This is where collaborating with other PE teachers comes into play. As teachers we steal ideas from one another all the time. If someone has something good, take it and use it. Again, I think that this is an ever-changing process. I am sure that it will be modified from year to year and even class to class. I think that this process is what makes good teachers.

Monitoring Your GAME Plan Progress

As I think about ways to use technology in an elementary PE setting I come up with more and more ideas. I think that as I orginally thought about this, I was getting too complecated. I don't think that it needs to be that complex. Even using pedometers for students to monitor effort levels is a great way of integrating technology into the gym. I don't know that I need to modify my action plan but I do think that I need to refine it. I need for my action plan to become more directed at the outcome that I want technology to have on my students in my classes. I've learned that students want to use technology. It is a great way to gain our students attention, and hold that attention. If I can use technology to gain my students interest I think that in the long run that it will help my studnets to learn more and become more interested in our content areas. This is an ever changing process, it is dynamic. It never really done, it keeps changing and evolving though the learning process.

Carrying Out Your Game Plan

There are many resources that will we will use to help carry out my game plan. I think that colleagues can help almost better than any other resource. They know what we go through as Physical Educators and they also have many great ideas. As an elementary PE teacher I don’t get a chance to see a lot of other PE teachers teach. I know that collaborating with other teachers can help me to become a better teacher. This week’s resource spoke a lot about how our students all learn in a different way. I think that it is important for us to have differentiated instruction. I also think that we need to provide our students with interventions and enrichments. I believe that I am taking steps toward becoming a more effective teacher.

Personal Game Plan

I think that it is important for us as teachers to instill the importance of technology in lives of our students. They need to know how to use technology and they also need to see us use technology. We cannot tell our students that technology is important and then now use it ourselves. One NETS-T goals that will help with that process is “Model Digital-Age Work and Learning.” This goal lends itself toward showing our students just how important technology is and can be to their future. Students will need to see me use technology in my daily life and also in class. This goal will also help me too collaborate with of teachers and educators. I think that it is important that I stay in communication with other educators, whether those educators teach in my same content area or not. Another NET goal I will strive for is “Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments.” I think that it is important that if I teach my students technology that I also assess them with technology. There is a ton of great technologies out there to help me with those assessments. I also know that students learn in a variety of ways, which is why it is important for me to use a variety of technologies to teach them. Some of our students are kinesthetic learners while others are visual learners. I will continually look back at these NETS-T standards to monitor my progress with the goals I have set for myself.

Reflective Essay

In a reflective essay to post on your blog, respond to the following:

• Describe the most striking revelation you had about the teaching of new literacy skills to your students as a result of this course.

I think the thing that struck me the most, is actually knowing what it is to be computer literate. There is a ton of information for our students to know in order to know the "new literacy skills." They must be able to find reliable information on the web and be able to know the difference between a reliable site and one that is less than reliable. Students must also know how to navigate a website to find the information they are searching for. Students today must have a larger skill base from which to call upon.

• Describe how the knowledge and experience gained in this course will influence your teaching practices going forward.

There is a ton of useful information I learned in this course. Some of the things I will take and use in my class are; internet based projects, using reliable websites, and helping my students to become computer and internet literate. There is a wealth of information out there for our students to use, our students need to be able to get to that information.

• Identify at least one professional development goal you would like to pursue that builds upon your learning in this course and develops your own information literacy or technology skills. Describe the steps you will take to accomplish this goal.

I am lucky enough that our district offers many technology based classes. I plan on taking as many as possible to help me get a better understanding of how to use technology to improve my teaching. Our students are growing up in a world of technology and we as teachers need to keep up with it as well.

Reflection

I think that there are many different ways that our students learn. There is not one learning theory that is better than the next. As a PE teacher I want my students to get in a lot of practice when we introduce a new skill. In order for my students to be successful they need to do the skill correctly over and over again. I would however like to introduce some new learning theories into my class.
I really like the idea of having my students chart in a spread sheet how the can improve their fitness levels. I think that it gives immediate feedback and is another way other than me telling them that they are doing a good job or could work harder. The other thing I would like to do with my students is to use a blog. I would use the blog to have students discuss activities they do outside of school.
Two goals I have for my classroom are to; continue to integrate technology and for myself to continue to new about new technologies. I think that there are a lot of cool things that I can do in my class that uses technology and also helps my students to better learn the subject matter. For myself, I will continue to take classes that teach about new technologies.

Voice Thread

This is the link to my voice thread.

http://voicethread.com/share/786915/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

I think that it is important for us as teachers to teach our students how to be able to work with other students. I believe that the learning is so much greater when our work with others. I think that it is important that when we have our students work together they do it in small groups (2-3) rather than large groups. I think that using smaller groups help to get all students involved and have a voice. Another thing that we also need to do as teachers is to use groups from time to time, it shouldn't be used all the time. Students do need to still be able to work independently. I think that when our students work together to solve a problem or work on a project each students brings a knowledge to the problem that the others may not have. By doing this I think our student learn more than by just working by themselves.

Constructivism in Practice

I think that forming and testing hypotheses is a way that our students can become higher level thinkers, and that goes hand in hand with Constructivism. We have to being higher level thinkers to be able to form a hypothesis. To come up with an educated guess as to an outcome makes us think at a higher level. We have to think about possible outcomes, which make sense and which don't. After coming up with a hypothesis we have to be able to test it. During the testing process our students will generate data which will either prove or disprove their original hypothesis. While looking at the data our students have collected they have to be able extract which is good and bad data. There is a lot of higher level thinking going on during this whole process. Our students have to look at various solutions or reasons to a problem that is proposed by the class or the teacher. When we have our students involved with the decision making process our students become higher level thinkers which is constructivism in practice.

Cognitivism in Practice

I think that there are many instructional strategies that correlate with the principles of cognitive learning. Cognitive knowledge is having a working knowledge about a certain subject not just memorizing facts. When it comes to cues, questions, and advance organizers the student must have and continue to have a working knowledge about that subject. I think that using cues and questions can help to facilitate that learning which will lead to have knowledge on the topic. Along with cue and questions students can also help to build that know by summarizing and note taking. Students must be able to add and subtract information in order to summarize a topic. When students do this they are working at a high cognitive level than just repeating what a teacher or book might have said. Have students be able to know what is important information and which information is secondary has those students working at a high level. The same goes for Note Taking. In the book "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" the author says that just repeating or writing note verbatim does not mean that the student truly knows the information. We as teachers want our students to be able to know and use the information we give them. To have cognitive knowledge about a subject students have to be able to think at a higher level.

Behaviorist Learning Theory

When it comes to behaviorist learning theory and reinforcing effort I can see a direct correlation between the two. As teachers we tend to praise behaviors that are positive in our classroom and punish behaviors that are negative. This find right in with what Skinner say about Operant conditioning and behaviorist learning theory. Although there are many different ways for our students to become and stay motivated, reward for good behavior and punishment for bad seem to be the most common and easiest way to reinforce effort.
Homework and Practice also fit into the BLT. They say the repetition is the mother of all learning. Doing homework and practicing something over and over will help students to better learn about a certain content area. Having students practice over and over will help students to learn about a subject matter but I don't think that it helps with higher order thinking.

Reflection

• In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills as a professional teacher?
o I think that this course has given me a lot of insight to the power technology has and will have in the classroom. I have learned of new ways to use technology in the classroom, including Wiki’s, Blogs and Podcasts. I want to start using these tools in my class to help make me a better teacher and to help my student become better learners.
• In what ways have you deepened your knowledge of the teaching and learning process?
o Students are not the same as they were years ago. Students need to be challenged and they want to learn in a way that is comfortable to them. Students today use technology more and more in their home lives and want to use it more and more in the classroom. We live in a digital world and our students need to be digital learners.
• In what ways have you changed your perspective from being teacher-centered to learner-centered?
o I like the idea of being in a learner-centered classroom. I think that it puts the focus more on the student(s). The student will in turn take more interest in their own education. The class will be more student driven rather than being lead by the teacher. Students will have to be able to find creditable information and be able to use that information.
• In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement?
o I think that this class has been a good launching off point and the following classes will help me to continue expanding my knowledge of technology. I will need to keep up on the latest technology and be able to pass those on to my students, in order to make them 21st century learners.
• Set two long-tem goals (within two years) for transforming your classroom environment by which you may have to overcome institutional or systemic obstacles in order to achieve them. How do you plan to accomplish these goals?
o I want to use a class blog to not only integrate technology but to also incorporate writing into my PE class. Writing across the curriculum is a focus in our district and a class blog will help me to do that.
o A school goal that I have is to have more computers and at one point have enough computers that each student can use a computer at their desk every day. We need to have more laptops for our students.

Podcast

Here is the link to a podcast I did for my masters class, asking a student about how shes uses technology. rcameron24.podbean.com

21st Century Skills

After looking through the 21st Century Skills website I was happy to see all of the great information it had in reference to teaching our students the skill for the 21st century. I think that the mission statement they had on the website was very thorough and see to be well thought out. It was interesting to see all the skills they see as necessary to be successful for the 21st century. The other thing I found interesting was all of the "big name" board members. To see all those companies that are involved with "The partnership for 21st century skills."
One of the things that surprised me was the vested interest in Math, Science and other technologies. I completely agree that each of these subject matters are important for our students to have a working knowledge of but the state I teach in does not have any standardized testing for science. It seems like in my state that if its not on our test it doesn't get taught to the extent that it should be.
The website has a bunch of information on it. I don't know the I disagree with any of the information but I also don't know how realistic some of the skills are to the immediate future. I think that it will take a while and a huge commitment from all teachers for all of the skills to become realistic.
Our world is ever changing and our students need to be ever changing as well. They need to have the skills to be successful in our ever changing world. We need to do what-ever-it-takes to help each and everyone of our students to be the best they can be. If we don't teach our students the skills of the 21st century, who will?