ITSE Goals

IB.  Technology Concepts and Operations

This is a teacher-centered goal.  For this goal, I would continue to explore new and interesting technologies and determine how they can relate to classroom application.  Through teacher blogs, technology websites and teacher communities, I would explore new technologies.  In some cases, I may take additional coursework at a community college to increase my knowledge.

IIB. Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences

For this goal, I would create a science lesson that would incorporate both hands-on (tactile) and technology-driven lab stations.  With the diverse amount of online resources, I could successfully plan both a technology and hands-on driven lab environment that would give students multiple ways of solving problems.  This could include hands-on experiments with rocks combined with a online lab that shows plate movements and volcanic activity in which they could control or change to see results.

IIIC.  Teaching, Learning and the Curriculum

For this goal, I could have children create a wiki space that children would update regularly.  This space would be centered in the Language Arts environment and encourage children to reflect and persuade other students to read the books that they are reading.  They can design their own space, enhancing creativity.  In addition, instead of summarizing the book, they would give persuasive arguments on why other student's should read the book, taking them from just regurgitating information to 'selling' the book.  Other student's would post to the wiki space after reading the book confirming the persuasiveness of the argument.

IVA. Assessment and Evaluation

For this goal, I envision a school where cell phones can be used in class to enhance the learning experience.  In this case, after presenting a lesson or discussion, I would use the immediate feedback poll sites to ask children question and have them text their responses to the poll site.  This will give real time data of understanding and confusion, in an anonymous way.  Even though the evaluation is not personalized, it will give me, the teacher, data to review, enhance or modify the lesson for maximum understanding.

VD.  Productivity and Professional Practice

For this goal, I envision a class website that gives access to both students and parents.  This website allows me to post pictures from class, projects and solicit feedback from parents.  This can be a facebook group page in which parents can talk with me, review class assignments/projects or just feel connected to the class and the teacher.  I believe this real time connection will enhance the parents engagement and get children excited about showing their parents what they do in class, increasing child productivity.

VIA Social, Ethical, Legal and Human Issues

This goal could be difficult to apply to different grades, but I can envision the use of society to enhance this goal.  By discussing and reviewing how social media, twitter, facebook, etc. is used in society, I can teach the students the right and wrong way to use technology.  Relating positive uses or negative uses to current news stories would allow me to tie in how technology affects individuals and society as a whole.  Positive uses such as texting to donate money to the Japan earthquake relief allow students to see how quickly the world can come together to support a cause.  Negative uses such as the comments made by Gilbert Godfrey show how words used by an individual can quickly become seen by world and affect that individual personally and professionally.

Chapter 1 Side Trip

I reviewed the blog sites:

weblogg-ed.com
thethinkingstick.com
speedofcreativity.org

These sites had some interesting information.  It was interesting to see how the sites took everyday issues and transformed them into lessons for students or teachers.  On the site speedocreativity.org, they talk about the Gilbert Godfrey and Aflac issue around the freedom of speech on social media.  The site took the issue and translated it into a sort of lesson on how much freedom of speech one has when they represent an entity, such as a teacher working for a school and the teacher's unofficial representation.  It was like a warning for teacher's.  On the other side, it talked about how to teach children that rash words can have detrimental consequences and talked about building a lesson around social media and freedom of speech for students.  The other sites dealt with real teacher issues, such as technology in the classroom and how teacher's can and should adapt. 

I can see these sites as references for teacher's as they provide valuable information to teacher's, both concerning the social aspect of the teacher and lesson planning.  Every teacher should have some sort of teacher community reference that goes behind the school that they work in; a more global community. 

I am still somewhat concerned on the use of blogs for children in school, but I am sure that more research using teacher blogs could lead me to very secure sites that school-age children could use.  However, for teacher's, becoming a member of one of these global blogs would be a huge benefit to their art of teaching and give them a sounding board when they run into difficult situations.

Social Media

Social media is interesting.  I am not quite sure that I am on board with social media.  I understand that it is the way of the future, but what is so wrong with the past?  To me, social media means no more privacy.  Social media almost insists that we need to be social creatures 100% of the time.  We are social creatures, but are we THAT social?  I'm not, nor do I ever want to be.  What ever happened to being anonymous, to have your OWN life that you do not post about 24/7.  There are social media outlets that are great for certain things; Facebook is great for keeping touch with friends and family around the country, to see pictures of loved ones and get periodic updates of what is happening without making a phone call.  Blogger is great if you have something to say and people who want to read it.  Picasa is great for storing and sharing pictures.  But Twitter?  I really have no need to know what street you are driving on, what you are eating for dinner, or anything else in your daily routine life.  Not interested.  Personally, social media is another task that consumes what little time I have to spend on myself for myself.  I have no need to share my daily routine with anyone so I don't need to hear about yours.   I only have Facebook because of my family, I will probably never blog in an open Internet forum after this class, and I have no need to store my pictures online.  I will NEVER have a Twitter account.

In an educational setting, social media can be a great way to enhance the learning experience.  However, social media today is mostly for personal use and the practical educational application of it pales in comparison.  You can get students to use for class for about 20% of the time, the rest becomes personal and no longer classroom related.  Students do not connect social media with education, they equate it to updating their friends about their status, making plans for after their class or whatever else they might think of.  Rarely do any of them say, "I am learning about animal cells today, that's cool!"  It reads, " OMG, I am so bored, can't wait to get out of this class."  Social media has a time and a place.  If a teacher can control it in a classroom setting, that's fantastic.  Realistically, that's a pipe dream.  Children today are much more savvy than their teachers when it comes to technology.  They will always win.