Blog Posting Assignment #2

Technology and Me

Areas of Growth
Over the last few weeks I have been on a journey of familiar and new territory for me. I have tried new things like creating on-line surveys, podcasting, social bookmarking, using Goggle Earth and participating in “live’ sessions on-line. I have also continued to enhance my skills on blogging features, website creating capabilities, and learned about new ways I can still incorporate technology into my classroom. The readings and research have helped strengthen my thoughts about why technology is such an important tool educators should be learning about, using, and teaching in the twenty-first century. The time to practice and “experiment” with the technology this summer gives me more confidence in teaching my students about what I learned and what they can learn from my experience.

Valenza states, ”To be most effective, students will need understandings of traditional information structures as well as understandings of the shifts in the way knowledge is built and organized.” I believe this to be true. Integrating web-based technologies helped me to see how effective it was for my own learning and using it could help many students learn in a way that is part of their everyday life.

Future Growth for Me
I am excited to implement my TechQuest project this school year. I think as I use GoogleLit Trips with the students this fall I will learn an immense amount of information on how I can effectively use this tool to help the reading comprehension of my students. I will have to remember, like all new technology, to make sure they are getting the comprehension out of the reading and not just playing around with Google Earth and its features (because it’s easy to do). They will be excited and motivated to use the technology, and I hope to use this energy to show them how important it is to be able to extract information from text in order for someone else to be able to read and understand it.

My personal technology plan will help me to have a way to continue my development in technology. I always have the students set goals on what they want to achieve each academic year, and now my students can also see my technology goals by looking on my website. It will definitely give me accountability when a handful of students will remind me of what I planned on learning and teaching this year! :)

I will be using the SIG projects of my fellow CEP 812 classmates when I immerse myself in digital storytelling and using cell phones in the classroom, which has been one of my interests since I got my iPhone in December. So even though I did not learn about it through this class, I have the information/resources to make the research process shorter and more enjoyable for me in the future.


Final Thoughts
This class has been a good experience for me, even thought it was very time-consuming and frustrating at times. I think I spent over three hours recording my podcast because of coughing attacks from my cold. It still has been time well spent. My husband joked about using the baby Bjorn to carry around the laptop since I was on the computer so much. I look forward to not turning in projects and meeting deadlines, but I will miss the time I had to devote to learning new technologies and ideas. I feel like I have a group of people and resources I can turn to in the future to continue my journey in learning and teaching new technology and enriching my students, so they too are information literate.


Resource
Valenza, Joyce. "Web 2.0 Meets Information Literacy: Make new friends and keep the old." N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Aug 2010.

TechQuest- Project Evaluation Blog Entry

Background
This project was very timely for me. My middle school is starting the process of the MiBLsi. We have our PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports ) plan in place, and we are going into our third year of implementation. In addition to this PBIS, this school year we are starting the RTI part of the process, and just last week I was asked to be the RTI specialist.

RTI is defined as “the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying child response data to important educational decisions”
(Batsche et al., 2005). From Website: pbis.org



What I have learned From my TechQuest and What Others Might Benefit From Knowing

My TechQuest is about using reading and technology to help middle schoolers read better. I began thinking about the project because I wanted to have a way for students to understand and be reflective in their reading skills (specifically- knowing their strengths and weaknesses). I started investigating CAIs (Computer Aided Instruction) to help students know about their reading abilities and then for them to have the means to work on those skills individually. Although there is research to claim CAIs can be moderately effective, I think they are created more for the secondary and tertiary levels of instruction and not for the class level of instruction I was looking for. At the time I started the project I wanted the reading strategies for the universal level, the classroom, the 80-90% of the students who are affected. See below chart for clarification of levels:

What would be helpful is to understand if one what to replicate this TechQuest is know what level of instruction one wants to tackle before investigating reading strategies /websites/ activities. I was looking for technology and reading for my classroom (universal intervention), but spent a lot of time researching for the more specific levels of instruction, the 20% of students who need more intense reading work which the CAIs would be better for. I am sure the entire class could use the CAIs, but it is not likely I would use them enough to be cost effective when there is a lot more curriculum to cover in a regular English class.

Because I did not fully implement the TechQuest project I cannot give all the specifics on what might help when using the sites with the students. The couple students that did try out the sites and assignments I gave them were motivated and liked using the computer to help in their reading comprehension. The GoogleLit Trip seems to be the one that was most interesting for my trial students. However, both students said they would need more instruction and guidance when using the GoogleLit Trip because it can be overwhelming. I would recommend learning about Google Earth and its features (great tutorials available) before tackling a GoogleLit Trip.

Evaluating My TechQuest’s Success

I hope to see a difference in my students’ abilities to reflect on their reading process. By zeroing in on comprehension and vocabulary and providing them with graphic organizers to display that thinking, I hope to see more of a reflection on their thinking/reading process. I am also going to use blogging as a way they can keep track of how they began the year thinking about text, entering posts every month and then reflecting on with a final post at the end of the year. Maybe by reading their own thoughts about the processes and strategies they used throughout the year they can see the changes that have occurred or not occurred in their reading.

The Future of My TechQuest

I will begin implementing my TechQuest in the fall of 2010. I look forward to using the reading comprehension sites and strategies with my students. My colleagues have already been informed about the research and information I have found this summer, and I will also be helping them implement portions of my TechQuest into their classrooms. I am still working on the vocabulary part and how that will fit into the class novels we will be reading in 8^th eighth grade English.

I will continue working on the secondary and tertiary levels of interventions for reading and technology since I am going to be the RTI specialist this coming school year. I will continue my investigation of the CAIs and see if they would be right for our school and helping struggling readers read better.

Resource & graphic:

"Response to Intervention & PBIS." Positive Behavioral Interventions & Support. TA& D Network, 2010. Web. 6 Aug 2010. .

TechQuest Implementation

Music approval link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Images for podcast







Image 1- Document for Anne on my website to start her tasks.







Image 2- AdLit.org site where Anne went to do task #2.









Image 3- The graphic organizer Anne completed from the AdLit.org site








Image 4- googlelittrips.org site for GoogleLit Trip Anne investigated.








Image 5- Anne's response to taking the GoogleLit Trip of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.







Image 6-

Note: Not sure why I did not include image of 1st website Anne tried. The site was Putting the Pieces Together.




Image 7- Venn Diagram

Note: Not referred to in podcast because I received this from Anne after I recorded my podcast.







Note- In my podcast I said the sites were .com; I misspoke they are .org.