Saturday, September 29, 2012

EDLD 5364-Teaching with Technology Week 5 Reflection on Videos & Readings

Videos:  The videos this week were discussed using gaming and virtual worlds to teach and test students.  Students become productive and empowered participants in their learning this way.  They get to practice the skills using games and virtual worlds.  This helps with problem solving as students are learning and being tested at the same time to get through the game/world.  If they don’t pass, they have to restart and try again.  According to Barab, teachers need to be given the correct tools in order to get this done.  Gee stated that we need to “reprofessionalize teachers” to allow teachers to come up with the curriculum and how it is taught in their classrooms and make teaching a “sexy or cool” job for people to go into.  Gardner shared his “Good Play Project” which deals with the ethical sense of young people today to make them more responsible when using these digital tools. 

Edutopia.org (nd). Big Thinkers: Howard Gardner on Digital Youth. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-howard-gardner-video
Edutopia.org (nd). Big thinkers: James Paul Gee on grading with games. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-james-gee-video
Edutopia.org. (nd). Big Thinkers: Sasha Barab on New-Media Engagement. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-sasha-barab-video
Youtube.com (nd). Vision for 21st Century Learning. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mirxkzkxuf4
Youtube.com (nd). Vision for Technology in K-12 Education. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhoOG5Kf1w4

Readings:  The assessment explanations in Web 2.0 were very helpful.  I liked how the author explained that we can use authentic assessment and still “prepare students to success in the standardized testing.”  (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 168) I agree with the authors that assessment should be formative (ongoing throughout the unit/lesson).  They also suggested, “if educators work together to plan their instruction and simultaneously plan ways to evaluate throughout the unit, they will develop a wide variety of interesting models.” (Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p. 170) 

In Using Technoogy with Classroom Instruction that Works, the authors recommend to “explicity teach students about the importance of effort and have students keep track of their effort and achievement.”  (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoshi, 2007, p. 156)  I am actually doing this they year in my classroom.  Students will be tracking their progress toward their goals.  We are supposed to begin it this week, but the software is having printing issues and I may not be able to get them the information they need in order to track.  I have notice a change in the students and their performance since I started showing them their class charts at the beginning of each class period.  I can’t wait to see the progress once they get their individual charts to start recording. 
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 155-164.
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, new schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 168-176.

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