Well on this quest of meeting my technology goals I have been fortunate an abundance of resources. From the CAST conference I met a lot of educators, vendors, and administrators who offered 100 percent support toward my education endeavors.
At this point I do not feel the need to modify my GAME plan as of yet, however I have more information then one can process at a time.
So far I've learned about two wonderful sites to use in my classroom, They are www.edmodo.com and www.thatquiz.org. Edmodo brings social networking into your classroom with a way of posting assignments and blogging with classmates. ThatQuiz is an excellent site for creating formative assessments utilizing online access or you have the option of printing the assessment out. The one big question I have as an educator is when and how do you spiral all of the information together? How do you know when you're on information overload? Some of us are perfectionist who have no problem attaining goals, however we evaluate progress in tiny tedious steps :-)
Alshaheed,
ReplyDelete"Information overload," is a major problem with both educators and students. One of the main problems that I find with multiple day education conferences is that I receive too much information. In reality, when I learn something new at a conference, I have only a few weeks to implement it into my class before I forget about it and the information is lost. When I give a presentation to my fellow colleagues, I always tell them that if they walk away and use at least one concept that I teach to improve their class, then my presentation is successful.
In the world of technology, baby steps are the way to go. When people ask your students what they learned in class, they should not recite that they learned how to use programs like powerpoint or a blogging program, because these programs should be merely educational vehicles intermixed with your curriculum.
Charles
I love the idea of That Quiz, however, the problem I always have is that I feel that we are constantly assessing my students with instruction being limited. Just in the first marking period my district requires 2 Math Learnia assessments, 1 LAL Learnia assessment, math portfolio pieces and a timed writing prompt. Not to mention unit assessments on the material actually taught. I have one students who constantly is saying, "another test?" and I find it hard to disguise my feelings of frustration on the amount of testing we are doing. I teach classified children and all of these assessments are on grade level and I am not allowed to modify based on their abilities. It is frustrating for them as well.
ReplyDeleteSo the difficulty I have with these wonderful technologies is how to I incorporate them around the district requirements without making the students feeling overwhelmed with testing.
Yes I agree, baby steps should would be a great idea when you are introducing new technology to your curriculum. Unfortunately test are part of the state mandates in order for public education to be funded, so there is no escaping them. I understand the students frustration, however it is up to the school/teacher to change the attitude of the students toward test. Each student has to be assessed on his or her knowledge, I would create an PBL assessment instead of the traditional style.
ReplyDeleteAlshaheed, information overload is a great concern for educators. Students are to be aware of this and need to understand the threats posed. In one of our earlier units, we discussed this at great length. I learnt that as teachers we need to educate our students to be aware of this situation and provide them adequate training to overcome the dangers it poses.
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