Universal Design for Learning & my GAME Plan

When originally exploring NETS-T indicators to learn about and develop for my students, I chose 1.c - promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes; and 4.a - advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.

Some of the steps I have taken to reach my goal of becoming more knowledgeable and sharing my knowledge with my students have been to review the video lessons from the class, to read the assigned text and to reach beyond these elements and to explore some of the additional readings and sites on our course supplemental recommended materials lists. I felt I learned a lot about UDL from the CAST.ORG website and their links to videos from UDL advocates, and wested.org, which provided a wealth of ideas for enhancing current academic material through multimedia and digital technology.

After reading Chapter 6 and learning more about UDL, I have decided to add one more indicator to my game plan that is from Standard 2. c - customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources.

One particular activity that I have undertaken, has been the introduction of keyboarding skills utilizing our classroom computers for many of my special needs students with lower cognitive abilities. I think it will reinforce language and reading skills and will help some of them develop their fine motor skills.

I am now searching for some good web based typing tutorial programs that very low level and emergent readers may be successful with.

Thinking Planning and Creating

As part of my GAME plan I blogged about last week, I said I want to develop my abilities to promote student reflections using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process (NETS-T indicator 1.c)

To achieve this I plan to require my students use the bubbl.us concept mapping tool in the formative stage of all research projects, whether written or online. I have used bubbl and have had some of my former AP students use bubble and Kidspiration (when our district paid for a school subscription.)

Bubbl is a good program for creative idea generating, and then linking ideas together in a cohesive manner. I have been playing with it to plan my science lessons on Energy and Magnetism, and using it reminded me to explore the library for additional material, and to search the net for some video clips to supplement our reading and experiment material.

Has anyone found another good, free concept mapping program out there?

NETS-T GAME PLAN

I believe Technology is an intricate part of our present and future educational process. That being said, I need to provide some background information before addressing the NETS-T indicators because I think it is relative to my situation and to many teachers' circumstances.

I work in an inner city school district in which 90 % of the schools qualify as Title 1 schools. Over 95 % of our students are minority students and over 90 % of them live at or below the poverty level.

Within our community there is a great digital divide. Most of our student's households do not own a computer or have Internet access. The access is only available through the public library system or at school. Many of our schools, my own included, have limited computer/online availability, which means our students have limited availability.

I have no disagreements or hesitation with the standards laid out in the 2008 NETS-T guidelines. I think the standards are laudable, and that every teacher should strive to achieve compliance with them. My experience has been and remains, that the implementation of the steps necessary to meet the indicators continue to be the main problem we have to address.

My high school does not have a lot of the technology necessary to implement many of the standards and indicators. For example we have no smart boards in our school. We do not have enough classroom projectors to display digital materials with. The only class rooms that have sufficient computer technology for daily use are the computer labs which are used to teach the technology classes. We do have a library with computers, but that is available on a first come first served basis, and many time the library is closed to classes for testing purposes. We have received this year two mobile laptop computer carts with 24 computers per cart, but these are still limited assets considering we have over 1800 students in our school.

Now all that being said, I recognize that there is much I can do to advance my own technology capabilities.

As part of my GAME plan I want to develop my abilities to promote student reflections using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process (NETS-T indicator 1.c) and advocate, model and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology...(NETS-T 4.a).

To achieve the goal of indicator 1.c, I plan to require my students to use more concept mapping and graphic organizing tools in the early stages of their research and project development. To accomplish my goal of indicator 4.a, I will demonstrate how to determine the validity of websites and the information they present, respect copyright laws and demonstrate how to correctly site and acknowledge the authorship of material used in research and presentations and provide references.

I will establish revolving student teams to review other students citations and references to enable students to develop their sense of responsibility and to insure compliance.

Things are looking up!

Technology is such a wonderful yet frustrating resource.

Today I looked in the mirror, so to speak, at a small objective I had to meet and was dissappointed in what I saw, so through the wonder of technology, with its unlimited permutations, I have been able to reconfigure my objective into a thing of beauty.

Now I am much happier with what I see in the mirror of my work.

Tomorrow however is another day and technology as is its wont may come back to bite me in my behind.

PS You can now follow my blog on Google Reader.

Endings and Beginnings

It is the beginning of May and I'm nearing the end of another school year. While winding down my teaching I am revving up my learning for another summer. One thing that is obvious to me at this time is that learning is a lifelong experience.

I am excited about expanding my knowledge of how to implement technology in my classroom, and I hope to learn from others about their expectations and experiences.