Technology Action Plan

As we all know, as teachers, our everyday lives and our professional lives are often entangled.   (Just look at how we are spending our summer taking this class.)  Such is the case this summer with me.  My everyday life involves working on next year’s school schedule.  While this dampers vacation plans some, it does offer me a good opportunity to begin using some of the web 2.0 tools in a professional manner, thus giving me a jump on implementing my action plan.

First, I plan to do more electronically, saving paper.  Google docs is the perfect tool for this.  Instead of printing documents for distribution, I am going to save them in Google docs and share them with the appropriate people.  I have also recommended to the principal that we use Google docs to share the schedule with the staff instead of printing it.  The fact that, if appropriate, we can collaborate on the document after sharing it, makes this tool even better.   My plan is to work with my team of teachers to create and share documents where we can manage students academically and behaviorally.  While I have been on teams that have discussed this in the past, I did not know how to make it happen.  With my new skills, this is one of my high priorities.  Additionally, as one of my summer assignments is to begin the distribution of lockers, I have already started this practice.  Instead of emailing out the list, requiring the teacher to complete it and email it back so that I can share the information with the administration and security, I am in the process of creating the lists in Google docs.  I intend on sharing these with the teacher, the administrators, and security.  This will simplify the process and ensure everything is completed in a timely fashion. 

Next, with all of the practice that we have had this summer with our blogs, I plan to start a blog for my classroom.  I feel that it will offer me the best way to post important information for both the students and the parents.  I believe that I will be able to post homework assignments, at least weekly if not daily.  I have found that posting is very quick.  If I make it a habit to post the information during my planning time each day, it should take less than 5 minutes and will be very accurate.  This will allow parents to know what was assigned and take away the excuses.  It would also allow students who were absent to stay on topic of the material and not fall behind.  Through a blog, I believe that it will improve my communication with parents.  There is so much useful information that I would love to communicate with parents, but I just do not have the time or resources to contact each parent separately.  This will help to solve that problem.

Moreover, as we learned about wikis, I thought that was the cure; however, I am no longer convinced.  I like the idea of collaboration and will spend this year practicing with wikis and asking more questions of our test coordinator/orchestra director, who is an expert at wikis.  I would like to incorporate wikis into at least one project or activity this year.   While I just have not figured out how that will work, I am hopeful to find a way to utilize wikis for my year-end project.  This project requires students to work together to present one of the MSA standards.  This past year I moved into the digital world by including PowerPoints for the first time.  My plan for this year is to find a way to incorporate wikis use into this project.

Finally, I think diigo may be one of my big saviors this year.  I know that in the past I have spent hours searching for just that perfect idea to use in my classroom.  This involved scanning many websites that were either not the right information, not appropriate, or, worse yet, not even related to my search.  By joining groups on diigo, I am able to see the websites that others have already accessed, possibly used, and liked enough to bookmark.  I can also see their comments, which may assist in lesson presentation.  Therefore, my plan is to join diigo groups this school year that are related to my content.  This may involve middle school math, algebra, pre-algebra, or other appropriate topics.

In essence, my plan for this year may not be very specific, but I believe that it is very ambitious.  I will begin by using Google docs to share information with my colleagues.  I will also start a classroom blog to post important classroom information, work to incorporate wikis into at least one project this year, and join diigo groups related to my curriculum. 

Social Bookmarking

As teachers, we say that we do not want to reinvent the wheel, but as teachers in individual classrooms, we often do.  We are often left to our own devices to develop the best ideas to educate our students.  However, through social bookmarking, we do not have to be on our own any longer.  Each of us has experienced the long Internet searches to find just the right information or ideas.  Now, as part of a group, we can see what information other people with similar interests have found and saved.  This can greatly reduce the amount of time we spend sorting through all of the irrelevant information available on the Internet and give us more time to tend to all of the other pressing tasks of our day.

Additionally, social bookmarking will improve our personal learning network by providing us with resources, when we need them, to answer the questions that we have.  Often questions occur when there is no one around to help.  Now, through the use of groups on social networks, we can find the answers when the questions arise, which is when we are actually ready to learn the ideas (not necessarily when someone is ready to present the information).

While these reasons will personally help me as an educator and other educators, social bookmarking can also be beneficial to students.  Just as I have questions when there is nobody available to answer them, students do too.  If I create a group for my students that provides links to websites that will assist them with completing homework, students would be able to access the information when they need it, instead of just when I choose to present it, thus increasing learning!  I would like to create groups for my students that will lead them to information regarding both the current lessons and the grade-level MSA topics.  Since we are expecting the students to master both and class time is limited, I think that social bookmarking can be used in conjunction with other Internet technology to assist the students.

Join me on Diigo--leichliter

RSS Feeds

I have never used Google Reader before.  I have absolutely no experience finding subscriptions or anything else related to the reader.  However, after I went through ten minutes asking the computer what any of this was about and receiving odd looks from my roommate as she walked by while I talked to the computer, I was able to figure out how the reader worked.  Once I began to find things to follow and add subscriptions to my site, I noticed that this is something I could really begin to like.  I recognized that, not only was I now accessing new items as they were posted, this was the type of reading that I enjoy.  I have always enjoyed reading short articles and stories as opposed to longer books.  I have a short attention span!  The reader allowed me to subscribe to various feeds that pertain to my interests.  It is like creating my own magazine that includes only articles of interest to me.  So far, I have added 4 subscriptions:

• A Teacher's Education
• Joanne Jacobs
• Class Struggle
• Organized Chaos

Even though my current "magazine" is small, I can see the possibility for growth over time.  Many of these subscriptions can lead me to new sites that are interesting to me.  I found all of my subscriptions by linking from other sites. 

I can envision using this reader to learn about new topics in the future.  I can add subscriptions and find new subscriptions as links on others.  The portability of the reader is just one more positive feature.  I can access my personal "magazine" at home, work, or on the go.

Websites in the Classroom

As I researched the various websites provided to us in class, a few of them stood out as ones that I would find beneficial to use in my classroom.  One of the sites, Curriki (http://www.curriki.org/) offers users a variety of resources that have already been created.  There are PowerPoints, videos, lessons, and activities that represent a variety of grade levels and contents.  The website can be searched by grade level, content, or both.  Additionally, the user can search by key terms.  I began simply by typing Algebra in the search box.  This quickly resulted in a number of topics that are covered in videos.

As a teacher, one of my biggest challenges has always been to not let absent students fall behind in the curriculum.  I think that this website could be one way for me to keep these students caught up with the material.  It is also a good way for students who need a little extra assistance with a topic.  The students can view the videos or PowerPoints on their own.  They can work through the exercises.  Additionally, I like the fact that there are a number of available resources on this site.  Usually, I find that as I am more specific towards middle school mathematics in a search, there are few activities included that are applicable.  This site is different.  I decided to search for games geared towards mathematics in grades 6-8 and found 159 choices available.  Now, while I am sure that not every game is perfect, I am likely to find something that will work for the topic I wish to review with students.

Another website that I enjoyed was ClassTools.net (http://www.classtools.net/).  It is set up to allow teachers to design their own quizzes, games, or activities.  There is a free version that allows you to design activities or access samples; however, one downfall of this site is there is a subscription fee if you want to access the Premium services.  While I have not mastered everything on the website, I am tempted to purchase the Premium service as one of my first attempts at integrating Internet based technology into my classroom.  I want to be able to create activities that I can save and access at any time.  The Random Name Picker is a quick way to randomly call on students with a fun twist.  The Countdown Timer offers a visual way for students to see how much time is left.  Moreover, Twister offers a unique project for students to research famous mathematicians and display the information in cute posters.  While I still have room to practice and master the creation of the activities, I do believe that this website would offer me a way to include fun in the review process, especially as we prepare for the standardized testing continuously throughout the year.  If I can motivate the students to want to learn, they will achieve more.  This website will offer motivation.

Google Docs Vs. Wikis

Google Docs are something with which I have a little bit of experience, but clearly not enough.  I believe that they should be easy, but Google docs have confused me in the past.  I know how to get to them, but I can never seem to figure out the use.  However, wikis made sense to me immediately.

Now, with that being said, I can see the great benefit of the school improvement plan being placed in Google docs and shared with the entire school.  This plan is share with us once a year, maybe twice, and we are supposed to be implementing it?  I think providing access to the staff would be a good manner to enact the plan.  I could see how curriculum documents could be shared the same way.  In fact, I noticed this past year that once I accessed my curriculum documents, they automatically ended up in my Google docs.  This made finding them easier than searching for the secondary mathematics site.

While I find Google docs a beneficial "storage" place for important documents that makes retrieval easy from anywhere, I do not quite see myself using this with my students in classroom applications.  I like wikis for that.  I am more comfortable and confident with my ability to implement this technology.  However, since the entire staff has Google docs and our data coach has used these in the past to share information, I could see Google docs being an important tool for sharing documents with my colleagues.

Wiki Creation

After reading the wonderful uses of wikis, I was looking so forward to beginning the process.  Creating the wiki was simple; however, developing rules and expectations was a different story.  As a new user of wikis, I struggled with foreseeing all of the problems that could arise.  While I read others' rules, I considered which I feel are helpful and which I feel too restrictive or not restricting enough.  I thought about the students that I taught this past year and the trials that I faced when we accessed technology.  I also considered the expectations that I have in my physical classroom.  I do not believe in listing every restriction as a classroom rule.  With these things in mind, I began developing my rules page.  Though it is short, I like the idea that changes can be made as necessary.  The editing function will be a lifesaver to new users like me.  I have already renamed the page as I felt expectations was a better description than rules.  I hope that as I continue learning, I will be able to develop a wiki that is both educational and fun for the students.

Wikis

The more I learn about the technology that exists, the more excited I am becoming about the next school year starting.  I thought that being able to use blogging to connect the class to the community was a good use of technology.  It would allow me to provide information to both the students and the parents and allow them to respond to both me and each other.  However, with a new understanding of what wikis are, I am even more excited about being able to use wikis to improve instruction!

I believe that wikis will be a great tool for allowing the students to gather different information as the year progresses that will then be available as both a review for the high stakes tests this year and years to come.  For instance, I am considering implementing wikis as chapter reviews.  I believe that if I create a wiki for the chapter and assign specific sections to each student, as a group they will be able to create a review before each unit assessment.  These reviews will then be available for future years to begin with and build upon.  Moreover, as I consider the high stakes tests that my students will have to take, I recognize that these reviews will be available as the tests approach.  

Finally, similarly to the unit reviews, I believe that the wikis would be a wonderful tool for the project that I use to wrap up the year.  The students create documents for each of the state standards.  These documents include notes, pre-tests, exit tickets, and PowerPoints.  By using a wiki, I would have a forum to collect this information and make it available for the students to access on their own without me hanging the notes or displaying the PowerPoint.  It would allow students to collaborate on the information and access he information for reviews.

I am very excited about the prospects, but hesitant at the same time.  I can see all of the great uses, but what happens when students interfere with other students work.  By allowing the collaboration, I am also setting up a site that would allow students to incorrectly edit another student's work.  How do I prevent these unauthorized edits?  How do I maintain the integrity of the work?