When I look at my GAME plan, I had two goals: create real-world, authentic problems to inspire creativity and set up collaborative workspaces for my students. I have progressed towards trying to meet these two goals rather quick at first and somewhat slower as I have progressed. When we first were given this assignment, I felt really good about these two goals and thought that everything would work out great. This has not been the case with both goals. The biggest thing I have learned is that patience and time are needed to complete any type of technology-based plan that I may have, including especially online collaboration. As my classroom has been working with a classroom in Hungary, we have run into a few road bumps, namely that the classroom in Hungary has been slow to get started. Right now I feel as if my classroom is sitting and waiting on them to get started. My students ask about it daily, but I do not have a reason for why the Hungarian classroom has not started. This has been somewhat frustrating.
I do feel that I have been exposed to so many new technologies through this course and attempting to meet my GAME plan that there is so much to use in my classroom. Vicki Davis (2009) talked about eduwiki (http://eduwikius.wikispaces.com/) in our videos this week and I have learned that there are so many new resources that I want to explore and perhaps try to help meet my GAME plan goals.
The biggest goal I have set for myself after working through my GAME Plan and through our course resources is to slowly integrate social networking into my classroom. My goal is to have simply my four common courses (our at-risk team members) collaborating first and then move to outside of our classroom doors. Since I have learned that I should start small and plan big regarding these new technologies, having my common classes collaborate seems like a reasonable start.
I would change my approach slightly regarding how I learn about using some of these technologies and that is in two ways – watching more online video tutorials first before diving right in so that I can decide which is the best possible site or resource for my classroom. The other change in learning that I would take is to go to some of the really tech-savvy people in my building and feel them out about these new technologies and see if they use them at all. Although I probably should have done this immediately with my GAME plan, I just was not able to fit this into my daily grind schedule. However, I think it would be so important in moving forward next time.
Resources:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program 10. Spotlight on technology: Social networking and online collaboration, part I. [Educational video]. Baltimore: Author.
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Casey,
ReplyDeletePatience in social networking can be frustrating. That was one aspect I was worried about when I decided to go back to school and pursue my degree online. I did not like the idea of not having a "physical" class to help me along the way. Have you tried expressing your feelings to the teacher with whom you have formed the wiki? You are kind of at their mercy until they decide to move forward...
Robyn
Casey,
ReplyDeleteI think it is a good idea to stick with the teachers/classes in your own building before moving outside of your school's walls. This way, you will have people to speak with face-to-face regarding issues and concerns you may have as you try to work out all the kinks. Perhaps this will prevent such issues as you seem to be having with your Hungary class. Those issues aside, I really hope it works out for you because that would be awesome to collaborate with a class of an entirely different culture. It's great that your students are excited and asking questions. How do you communicate with this teacher? Is she new to the wiki world as well? You are right when you say patience is the key! You will have many frustrating times when students are struggling to understand something and they all come to you with their questions, questions even you may not have the answers to right away! Good luck!
Jennifer
Jennifer and Robyn,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. I have emailed the teacher in Hungary - not getting much from them. Like I said, it is still a learning process for me. I have set up one collaborative assignment with the English teacher that works on my team so hopefully that experience will be better as we can meet face to face.
Like I said, since this process is so new to me, I wanted to jump right in but this setback has allowed me to reflect and realize that baby steps are a lot easier and probably better to begin with.
Casey