GAME Plan - Step 1

After looking at my game plan I have begun to consider the steps I will take to reach my goals. One of the first things that I must do is compile resources that I will use to guide me through my game plan. The biggest resource that I will need is a few teachers who are willing to assess my lessons and activities. To find these teachers I can ask around my school or perhaps I could ask a cooperating college professor. To me the second option seems to be the most likely. My school is constantly being visited by students from University of Georgia as well as others in the area. I am planning on asking the students who are coming for observations and practicums if they know any professors that might be interested in helping me. Another resource that I could use to find not only mentor teachers, but professional development activities as well, is as an educational forum where teachers post ideas that they are using in their classes.

I am finding that I will need more than just these resources to accomplish my goal. I will also be needing more information concerning problem based inquiry projects and effective technology integration into general music classrooms. Much of this information will be gathered through web searches and educational books on the matter. I also suspect that the teachers who would be willing to take me under their wings would also know a thing or two about these areas. Still another strategy for learning all of this information is to check the internet for educational media like podcasts or videos.

So far I have only been able to have a few discussions with visiting college students and teachers at my school. I have not yet found more experienced teachers who are not to busy to assist me with this educational endeavor but I will not give up my search.

Getting a GAME Plan

One of the most difficult issues that a teacher, or person for that matter, must ultimately admit is that no matter how much they learn their are still things that they could be better at. I recently read a list of technology standards for educators created by the International Society for Technology in Education. The group consisted of: Student learning & Creativity, Digital-Age Learning Experiences & Assessments, Digital-Age Work & Learning, Digital Citizenship & Responsibility, and Professional Growth & Leadership. I am very comfortable with encouraging student learning and creativity and educating digital citizenship and responsibility, since music and the music industry are so intertwined with these standards. However, their are two that I would like to become more fluent in. They are designing and developing digital-age learning experiences & assessments and engaging in professional growth and leadership. Fortunately, I have created a game plan to help me become more confident in each of these areas.

My goal will be to create and use at least one newly designed digital-age learning experience and assessment each week, as well as commit to engaging in at least one technology related professional learning activity per quarter. The way that I will achieve these goals is through networking and accountability. I will start by finding teachers that are more experienced in these areas and, essentially, ask them if they would be a mentor or guide to me during this season of growth. Then I will post my new lessons to a blog or wiki where they would be able to respond with their comments about how I could continue to better them and my understanding. I will be able to monitor my progress through the comments that the teachers are leaving, as well as be able to see if I’m reach my desired lesson out put by simply looking at the posts on the wiki/blog. Aside from having the networked mentor teachers give me pointers on my lessons I will also be able to find out what sorts of professional technology activities are being made available to teachers.

Evaluating my growth will be done by checking the posts to the wiki/blog. From here I should see a gradual depletion of growth centered mentor comments. I should also be able to calculate the number of lessons that I have been able to implement. The last area of evaluation I will make is to post all of the professional development activities that I have completed so that I will be able to gage how I am reaching these goals.

I expect that with this game plan and a strong willingness to grow as an educator I will be able to provide the level of quality that our students need for the future. If you have any ideas let me know.

A Current Reflection

As I am continuing in grad school, I have just recently completed a course designed to provide educators with techniques which allow them to teach their regular course content as well as something called the new literacy skills. This has absolutely been one of the most enjoyable classes I have undergone. The new literacy skills encompassed five major areas: Questioning, Searching, Evaluating, Synthesizing, and Communicating. In each of these categories we learned how to create more student centered inquiry based lessons. These methods give the students freedom to define what they want to learn about. This in and of its self increases student motivation and especially initiative.

During this course I was taken aback by the amount of student autonomy that these lessons and methods ignite. I sometimes struggle with the idea of letting the students direct themselves because I am cautious of how the classroom will be maintained. However, I have come to realize that the students are capable of much more than what I was allowing. Another very intriguing moment that I had during this class, was when I began to realize that we as educators are attempting to teach students skills for a future that is undefined or foreseeable. With the rate that technology is advancing we must make sure that the time we spend with our students is being used to educate them on the most pertinent, objective, and relevant skills.

The content of this course helped me to become more aware of the teachable moments where I can instruct things like: how to navigate a website, how to evaluate the content of a website, and even how to connect what we are learning to the creation of an educational artifact. With the methods described in my current course I will be able to stretch over my standard content area and implement 21st century skill instruction.

This has led me to set the goal of assigning more students driven research projects which allow the integration of the new literacy skills into my curriculum. For me to accomplish this goal I have begun to reshape my standard curricular approach so that their will be more creative and communication projects. I have also begun to rethink my classroom set up so that it accommodates these types of activities more readily. Finally, I have resolved to continue networking and searching for tools which will increase my efficiency and effectiveness as an educator of music and technology.

A Website Evaluation

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Oh... It’s Just a Reflection

When I began the Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology course at Walden University I initially posted that my personal learning theory was a mixture of all of them. Honestly, my personal learning theory hasn’t changed much. I still see how, given my content area, everyone of the learning theories has its place. Still, this is not to imply that I haven’t learned anything which would require me to make changes to my teaching strategies.

One immediate change that I am planning to implement in my music class is to use concepts maps as an aid during instruction. This tool will allow for me to display the information in a way that caters to multiple learning preferences. Another is to use voicethreads. This would allow students to create different types of media presentations and then other students would be able to comment on their creations.

With the information I gathered from this course I am also planning some not so immediate and more drastic changes to my classroom setup. One, which centers on the ideas presented in the social constructionism learning theory, is to increase the amount of student interaction. I am going to begin to design many of my lessons to be more project based so that the students will need to work together to complete the assignment. Another goal is to increase the amount of technology that we use. As it stands now I only have one computer in my class, but even with this disadvantage their are still many technology based activities that I could institute into my classroom. One example is the use of virtual field trips. This allows students to observe and learn information from anywhere on the planet. With these new types of activities and technology based tools our students are able to do things in the classroom that others before them could only dream of.

What do you see?

Lets work together. (social constructionism)

I have been studying some on the idea of cooperative learning. This is basically activities which are designed so that students learn in group projects. Since, as you may have guessed, my preferred learning theory is the constructionist theory these cooperative lessons would be categorized as social constructionism. I like this idea because it allows the students to understand the content on a deeper level, gives them a perfect example of how they will work in the “real world”, and it also helps them to learn social skills.

One activity for this type of method is presented in the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. They describe a middle school teacher that assigns a two week movie project in which the students must present information about the lives of famous mathematicians. One very wise decision that the teacher made was to keep the groups relatively small in size. This will allow for each student to be able to contribute to the project (artifact) without being lost in a mass of other student suggestions.

Another Idea suggested by the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works is the idea of creating a website. I love this idea because the students are able to work outside of school. They are also able to show off their site. One issue that I am still trying to work the kinks out on is, how to let students show off their musical compositions. The music that we create in computer programs I can export as an mp3 but if I post a picture of their written compositions, the looker doesn’t get much out of it unless they can read music. This is not to mention the limited amount of space that I have on my site for storing. However, if the students had their own sites they would be able to post their school work and share their creations with the world, including their parents.

The one idea that I am the most excited about is called a voicethread. With it students can comment on pictures that are submitted to the thread. This would be really interesting for creating projects about composers, instruments, or large musical works. In a way these act a lot like blogs or wiki, which are also good cooperative learning activity facilitators, because the students are contributing to a main thought. I could see these types of activities working very well with large group assignments.

In each of these examples the students are creating something (yeah constructionism) and working together (social). I would love to see more and more activities like these instituted into the classroom.

References:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.