The two goals I developed for my personal GAME plan are:
- To determine how collaborative tools such as blogs, podcasts, and VoiceThread can be used to promote student reflection and incorporate these reflective tools regularly into instruction.
- To create new authentic learning experiences and real world problem solving activities with technology as I develop my third grade common core curriculum.
So far I feel like I am making progress towards reaching
these goals. In the past week I attended
a week long class in which I learned ways to teach the new core math standards
while integrating science, language arts, and creative arts standards. I learned some really creative and authentic
ways to teach using the mathematics core standards. Next week I will be attending a few professional
development days through my county focusing on teaching the new core
mathematics standards. Following these
PD days I think I will have a better grasp on how I will be teaching the core
standards this coming year so I can begin to create more authentic learning
opportunities for the new standards. In
addition, I am curious to find out how my county’s vision of the core standards
and how they should be taught will fit in with what I learned last week.
I am really
excited about using technology as reflective tools in my classroom this coming school
year. I plan to have a computer station
in both math and reading. My vision is
for students to reflect on the text we are reading throughout the week as they
participate in discussion and answer prompts about the text. In math I plan to have a weekly problem
posted in which students can share how they solved the problem, ask questions,
and view different examples from their classmates. The main technology resource I will be
utilizing will be our class blog on kidblog.org. I would also like to utilize podcasts and
VoiceThread as collaborative and reflective tools more often. If you know of effective ways to use these
tools for this purpose please share.
Chelsea,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you are on your way and making some great progress on your GAME plan! It sounds like it really helps to attend the professional development that is offered through your County, I guess that is one of the benefits of working for a larger County instead of a smaller district.
Sometimes, I think that it is more of a challenge to incorporate technology for collaboration into math than it is for another subject because there are so many specific skills that students need to master in a school year. I am not sure where I heard or read it, so I can't reference it, but I have been thinking about using an idea that I got from one of our resources from a previous class. The teacher used a Wiki where the students would write how to solve problems, hints for shortcuts, and real life examples for each unit. Students could keep revising and adding to each topic until they eventually had a comprehensive study guide for their curriculum. The Wiki could then be used by other students, including future students, to use as a resource for homework help. They had even made it public for viewing so that other students could use it. I love the idea, and it would be a great way to integrate technology!
Maureen
Hi Maureen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the idea of the math wiki. This would be a great way for students to help each other. I am hoping to get a similar result from having students solve weekly word problems on our class blog. In this case I love that students will be able to see that there are multiple ways to solve problems and sometimes there is more than one answer.
Chelsea
Hi Chelsea:
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, you have great ideas to achieve your GAME plan goals. I agree with Maureen about math being the most difficult subject to integrate collaborative tools, but it has been demonstrated that is not impossible. I love your idea of working with word problems because I believe this is one of the hardest concepts for students to understand. While doing my Bachelor's Degree, I found a lot of university students who did not know how to solve this kind of exercises, and, at these days, the students joining the workforce cannot afford to not master this important skill.
Your ideas of integrating a class blog, podcasts, and voicethread to work with this is excellent. I was going to suggest you the Wiki, but Maureen got ahead of me, and I could not have explained it better. I am really curious about the knowledge you will gather in the professional development from your county.