Week Four: How Is My Game Plan Going?

Week Four: How Is My Game Plan Going?

In last week’s blog, I commented that I had e-mailed my district technology coordinator about making one of our “Tech Tuesday” sessions all about the document camera, its soft ware, and its uses in the classroom. I received an e-mail this morning from Adam, the tech coordinator, who thanked me for my suggestion and said that he could definitely do not just one session, but several due to the fact that because of budget cuts, teachers will have to consider making sure that they use technology in the place of making paper copies as much as possible. These sessions should begin taking place in August. I am not sure how many other teachers will attend, but it is very exciting! So, as far as my GAME plan, I feel that I am on my way to reaching my goal of learning this new piece of technology, but that I can begin my own learning over the summer months with the online tutorials that I mentioned last week and being able to explore using the document camera that I already possess in my classroom. I certainly do not want to wait until August to really begin my learning here. One of the indicators in the ISTE NETS Performance Indicators for teachers from, http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx,  that I chose to address during week two, was modeling the use of technology in every day situations. In this sense, I feel that I can really demonstrate this standard to my students as I use these new technologies in the classroom often. 

My action plan has been successful so far in incorporating “Tech Tuesday” in to the mix and finding the online tutorials that I have found. I still think that I need to elicit my colleague whom uses this piece of technology quite often so that I can learn some success tips to begin. I think that I need to make clear a time limit for myself so that I know that I am really staying on track. When I had taken the course, “Action Research for Educators,” I learned that making a timeline for my action research project would help me to focus not only on what I was doing in the present, but where I needed to be headed for the coming weeks. I would like to say that by the end of the first quarter of the school year, I would like to feel comfortable with using the document camera as a lesson tool completely and then be able to extend to student use of the technology during the second quarter. 

So far, I feel that I have learned that when it comes to technology, it is not just about what I am comfortable with. In Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer’s text(2009) this week, a “Story From Practice”(p. 138) quoted a teacher who commented that she “was dragged in to technology kicking and screaming.” After experiencing the technology and how it changed her classroom for the better, she could not imagine her teaching without it. I feel the same way. I never would have thought that a classroom website would have been more than more work for me and no help to the students, but after experiencing its benefits, I am amazed at how easily students can access homework, take practice quizzes, view videos, participate in discussions, etc. What a great tool! As a teacher, I have to keep in mind that I cannot let my uneasiness or nervousness stop me from learning new ways of instruction when it comes to technology, otherwise, my students are missing out on some very authentic classroom work. 

I cannot say that I have any new questions at this point, but I know that I will have many questions as I really begin learning about this technology. 

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.

ISTE NETS Performance Indicators for teachers. Retrieved on May 9, 2011 from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx