Reflection

From the time I began kindergarten in 1972 until high school graduation in 1985, there was no discernable difference in pedagogical practices, at least not from my vantage point. In the current decade, to say that education has changed is to make an understatement bordering on the inane. The light speed with which technology has outpaced a notoriously resistant to change educational system such as our own has left far too many students behind, bored and…angry.
If you’re anything like me that last word might stop you dead in your tracks. Recently I came across an article by Marc Prensky titled, Engage Me or Enrage Me (2005). I bristled at the title but read it anyhow. In this program it has been difficult to avoid Prensky, so I assume most of my colleagues would be familiar enough with the gist of this article. The formula is something along the lines of; kids today are very different, teachers are not, kids are savvy, teachers are not, kids don’t learn the way we used to and teachers still teach the way teachers used to. (At least that’s how I heard him initially.)
All these differences I have been aware of for some time and embarrassingly I’ll admit that in the past I have remarked how, “Kids these days, they don’t want to work for anything. They expect you to juggle for them, as if they should be entertained every minute of the day.” Then I read something that was pretty simple, only I hadn’t thought about it before. A commentator on NPR mentioned that the educational model that we still employ is an obsolete one based on a scarcity of information. Fifty, sixty, seventy years ago it simply was not a given that you would have access to books, teachers, libraries and the like. The most efficient format for education was to put several dozen or several hundred people in a room with an ‘expert’ at the front. Our children, even the very young, have unprecedented access to more information than we can truly comprehend. Now I get it…they are angry and I finally know why!
One of our resources from a previous class reported a study in which 25% of today’s students think school interesting or meaningful to them. In addition, fewer than half believe that what they have learned in our educational system will help them to be successful in life. What is disconcerting to me is that from what I have seen (including but not limited to my classroom), they are probably right.
We (I’m looking in the mirror here) must get off our collective laurels and educate these kids in how to handle, evaluate, search, categorize etc., the enormous quantity of information they are inundated with each day. What does all this ‘soapboxing’ have to do with a GAME plan anyway? I have a far greater motivation now to alter my role as an educator. I have always cared about kids, I have always wanted to find ways to reach them and help them learn. However, it has taken a true paradigm shift to recognize that it is NOT the kids who need to wise up and change. My new, sincere GAME plan is as follows;
Goal: Learn to facilitate learning, rather than direct it. Not a small task.
Action: Locate resources (articles, blogs, interviews) and submerse myself in the idea, language and perspective.
Monitor: Recruit a colleague (Pam, she doesn’t know it yet but she’ll do it) to join me and we can keep each other company through the trial and errors.
Evaluate: I honestly believe this will be the easiest part, I just have to look at my students and see how many are engaged or enraged.

Monitoring GAME Plan Progress

GOAL ONE – I am dissapointed in regards to my work towards this goal. It is a glaring example of the difference between intention and action. End of the year craziness is in high gear and time-consuming in the worst way. Ironically, I am further behind in my screencasting abilities than in my wiki skills. Thanks to recent assignments, I have been brushing up on wikis and now feel more confident in incorporating this tool in my classroom. I’m sure this confidence will increase in the coming weeks as we utilize our Walden Wikis more.
The most important item that I feel I need and want to learn is how to create a screencast. My new questions are how will I motivate myself and make the time to do so? It feels a little like being back at square one although I know that isn’t entirely true. Since I will be in a new building (or two) next year, I feel even more motivated to come armed with some new ideas and skills. In a couple of weeks I will finally have some time to play around with the screencast tool.
GOAL TWO – Progress on this goal is slow but steady. I discussed with my principal about creating an informal group of teachers learning/sharing technology based ideas for the classroom. He invited me to come to a leadership committee that will continue to meet over the summer which has a sub-group for technology. The next thing I knew I was one of two people who are heading this sub-group. Initially I was less than thrilled when my partner announced that the only reason he was joining this committee was because he could earn 3 CEU’s for it at a cost of ten dollars. In the last few days the group has doubled (!) to four and fortunately one of those folks is in essentially in charge of technology for all three high schools. She also happens to be very positive and eager to help/learn herself. I strongly feel that this goal is solidly moving forward and I hope to involve more colleagues in the coming weeks.
Part of this committee’s work is to drum up ideas for professional development days. When I consider the possibilities, my first question is what would be the most useful and also be engaging enough to grab the attention of the reluctant learner? (Sounds just like what I do in class!). I wonder what it would take to motivate the unmotivated teacher in regards to technology? I know my own situation is common (my initial reluctance/fear) but that is just one example. As usual, I am eager to hear your thoughts.
Amy

Reviewing the GAME

GOAL ONE - I have yet to make any progress on the screencast other than to involve my husband in training me how to use it more proficiently. Fortunately for me, he is wonderful at describing IT type things in a simple yet thorough manner. One of the things I have learned AGAIN is that I really do need to schedule time aside to work with new technologies and preferably with a colleague or in a work situation. These are the times when I will do what I have planned to do to meet my goals. When it is left up to me to tackle a new web 2.0 tool, I get anxious to the extent that I continue to put it off until… never! This may be foreign to some but I am sure it is familiar to a few folks. I try to remember this when students are struggling with unfamiliar endeavors. The only modification I am making with this goal is to utilize my friend and colleague Pam to practice with and brainstorm ideas for creating a screencast to teach students how to make their own wiki.
GOAL TWO - I have made more progress towards meeting my second goal, which is to form a network of teachers who are at varying levels of using web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and who are willing to learn and share what they have accomplished in this arena. Each year my district offers a technology in-service called “Spice It Up” towards the end of the summer. I spoke with the director of the program during a professional development afternoon last week and asked if I could have the floor for a few minutes to solicit fellow educators who would be interested in networking and meeting a few times throughout the year. I’m happy to say that my request was well received to the extent that she offered to help in getting me going with this. I have had a few colleagues who have come forward interested in this and thanking me for suggesting it.
In an ironic turn of events, I found out only last week I along with 3 other teachers were awarded a grant for a Mimio (portable smartboard) that my district’s non-profit “Foundation for Excellence” http://www.foundation4excellence.com/mini_grants.html program provides. This education-based organization supports technology and literacy as the most direct path towards advancing students’ learning. A day later I found out that I will be switching schools and therefore NOT enjoying the Mimio! Oh well, it looks like this is my opportunity to write a grant on my own. It might sound strange but I am intrigued by the thought of doing so. With the way things are going here in Michigan, it might be the only access to new technological tools I have.

GAME Plan

Since beginning this Master’s program, I have increased my use of technology by 100 percent. Before the compliments start rolling in, the truth is I used hardly any to begin with. I believed that there were too many obstacles (the time it takes to learn technologies, time to teach them to students, etc…). The few WebQuests I had designed were little more than fill-in-the-blank from the website worksheets. Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde (2005) list these types of worksheets as less effective and less engaging than best practice instruction, a notion that is obvious to most educators. The bottom line is that I have a lot of catching up to do. In regards to the NETS-T performance indicators, I have created the following GAME Plan.

Goals-
1. My first goal refers to standard 3, performance indicator (D). My goal is to be able to fluently utilize digital tools in a variety of professional ways in order to not only advance my students’ learning but to demonstrate all aspects of learning including analysis, information location and evaluation. Through this goal I will become the “innovative professional” that I desire to be.
2. This is a particularly important goal for me. Standard 5, performance indicator (A) refers to professional growth and leadership in regards to local and global learning communities. Prior to beginning this Master’s program, I dreaded the idea of going back to school. I now find that I am afraid to NOT be in some form of learning environment. My goal is to find or form communities that will share and compare use of digital tools in their classrooms. Vicki Davis, co-creator of the Flat Classroom Project made quite an impression on me when she pointed out that regardless of what a person is teaching, there is another teacher out there who would be interested in collaborating.

Action-
1. I find that teaching through my own experience is usually the most effective route for my style. One idea through which I could progress to my goal is to create a Screencast for my initial attempts at learning a new technology. For example, while I have used a wiki in a previous class here at Walden, I have been hesitant to incorporate them into the classroom due to my lack of proficiency and the time involved in teaching the skill. If I were to create a Screencast as I spent time becoming more proficient with wikis, I could demonstrate to my students the thought processes as I maneuvered through steps for creating a wiki. This would have the benefit of modeling while instructing.

2. Over the summer and prior to the start of the school year, I will work with a friend/colleague on inviting teachers in the district to an informal meeting to discuss collaborations on technologies in the classroom. Ideally the meeting would be a cross between a formal professional development except that it would be an informal and voluntary gathering. My suggestion is to have teachers share what has worked in the past, what hasn’t worked and why as well as locating and experimenting with new digital tools.

Monitor and Evaluate-
1. Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009) suggest that one may monitor and evaluate through two forms of reflection; “in action” during the actual process the action (essentially thinking about what you are doing, how is it going, what should you be doing differently, etc) and “on action” reflection, which is the assessment of the action. Cennamo et al note that reflection is not just about what happened, but why and how as well. As in the action portion of my plan, I find that it is in the process of planning to teach and teaching others when I am most prone to critical reflection. The adage, “To teach is to learn” is very true for me in these types of experiences. Modeling digital tools and putting them into action in my classroom will give me excellent opportunities to become more fluent and able to effectively facilitate their use while assessing my own learning.
2. In this scenario, monitoring and evaluating the progress of my goal would be done as regularly as the collaboration takes place. In addition to my own monitoring and evaluation, I would be able to include other perspectives on effectiveness of our meetings. As I have learned again and again, working with my peers has provided me with knowledge, insight and motivation far beyond what I could accomplish on my own. That may sound a little hokey but it is profoundly true in my case.
I am eagerly anticipating ideas, suggestions and questions regarding how I can best succeed in accomplishing my goals through this GAME Plan.

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.
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf