What have you learned so far that you can apply in your instructional practice?
Thus far, in trying to incorporate my GAME plan into my instructional practices I have found that teaching is a lot of getting through the administrative aspects in order to provide these lessons to my students. This is due to the allocation of money in ways that are not necessarily agreed upon by all teachers in the district. Previously I explained my districts current position on ONLY using eChalk as they have spent a lot of money on the program. This fact remains a roadblock in the use of the wikis in my classroom. eChalk is extremely glitchy at the school and although I have tried quite a few times these past few days, the program seems to be too convoluted for my students (and myself at times!)
What goals are you still working toward?
I confess, I am still trying to teach my students how to use this program and also how to maintain a student-professional atmosphere when posting discussions. This means asking students to refrain from smiley faces, extra exclamation points, as well as having the students use proper spelling and grammar.
Based on the NETS-T, what new learning goals will you set for yourself?
I will be continuing the goals I have initially set forth as progress has been quite slow.
If you are not ready to set new learning goals, how will you extend what you have learned so far?
My intention is to start my wiki with the students and expand the communication “To obtain a constant, quality communication system that reaches parents, students, and teachers.” My next extension would be towards the teachers and lastly towards the parents.
What learning approaches will you try next time to improve your learning?
In the future I will definitely try to accomplish a goal that is a more immediate notion rather than something that requires the attention of the entire school district. It is better to go from a classroom experiment to a school wide/district wide initiative than vice versus.
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at
http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Miss Ellis
ReplyDeleteBeing that students communicate through text more than actual conversation I agree that it is a big challenge in the classroom to get them to write in the correct grammatical form. It is difficult because they use the text slang more than they use form writing. This is a challenge for a lot of us teachers. I want to pull my hair out somedays.
In the past, when doing online discussion with middle schoolers, I did not have a problem with informal things like emoticons and some abbreviations. Explaining it to them, I said that their point of view needs to be clear to all people, not just their classmates. I didn't see a problem with it as long as their opinions were supported and related to the topic. Would you ever reconsider your position on the smileys?
ReplyDeleteI like my students to understand that posting things on the world wide web is forever. Due to this fact, I like to keep emoticons out of the equation so that my students rely more on fact than opinion. I don't think our students think about that aspect of forever and EVERYONE on the internet. Also, when working academically, I like that my students keep it academic. This would be the first time my students separate a professional conversation/posting with everyday life. They also have difficulty communicating and using advanced academic vocabulary, I believe smileys and "text language" could be a short cut in lieu of using the academic language.
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