Goals for 2012

I always get a sense of excitement around this time of year, yes because summer break is just around the corner, but also because this is a time to reflect on the year. During this reflection time I look at learning process that were a success and those that were not. I get excited about new ideas and tweaking or refurbishing old ones. Instead of packing up and closing up shop I prefer to use this time to get organized, set goals and put plans in motion for the upcoming year. Our 2012 art room will be awesome!

Some of the weaknesses I found throughout this year is assessment of students. In a visual art setting it is most common for me to see each of my student classes once a week. When I lay it out that is a maximum of 36, 40 minute class periods and when you add prep and clean up time into the mix it does not leave a lot of room for students to really reflect on what it is they are learning and/or creating. I am going to start the year off with student surveys using either Surveymonkey or Student Responders. I will check at grade level what it is students know and what it is that they would like to know. I am also going to add self-evaluation forms to the end of completed projects students will evaluate their work and work habits to deem themselves a master artist, artist, apprentice or doodler based on a reflection of elements of principles, creativity/originality, effort, skill, and attitude. I am also going to create a class critique guide to show students what should happen during an art critique. I am also going to rely on our 3 netbooks for online reflective blogging as a student centered view of projects.

A classroom blog is second on my list of priorities. My focus is student/parent/family involvement that goes beyond our classroom. Posting images of students art work is a given, but I would like to take it a step further. I would like to have ongoing art contest that are worked on outside of school. I would like to have student and parent dialogue that continues outside of school about the things that we are working on. I would also like it to be a reference for students to find information and links to places of learning on the web. I would also like to highlight the superb job that some students put forth. I am thinking something along the lines of an artist of the month. Maintaining the blog will need to be a continued priority on my part. I will set aside Friday mornings before students arrive as my web updating time.

Learning circles are also a major implementation I would like to include in 2012. This year my Tech-students participated in epals and created and shared digital stories with a sister class in the UK, it was a wonderful starting experience. With the inclusion of learning circles it will give us actual face time with our participating class as well as a chance to learn about global issues.

All in all I am very excited and look forward to keeping up the momentum, just after I plant my feet in some sand!

A new way of life!

Utilizing the GAME (Goal, Action, Monitor, Evaluate/Extend) Plan has not only served up benefits for myself but for my students. It is a great way to organize thoughts and ideas as well as keep a current watch and reflection on your learning process. It is often that a student can tell me an answer but not tell me why they know that answer; the game plan allows us to actively participate in our own learning and decision making toward reaching various goals. With my GAME plan set in my first blog “Game Plan for Technology Integration Success” I had chose two National Education Technology Standards for Teachers, NETS-T as my goals. Through the progression of the 5 blog entries that followed I feel I have not only achieved these goals and turned them into authentic learning experiences for my students, but have made the commitment to maintain these goals as a way of life not as an ending marker. I wish for my classroom to be ever evolving, never to teach the same two years in a row and to not only meet, but highlight the individualities of each of my students.

The professional benefits of committing to life-long learning extend beyond the immediate resources I have connected with over the past 8 weeks. Joining social communities, collaborating with professional learning communities both near and far have both given me a wealth of knowledge, ideas and information to facilitate to my students. My students as well have not only adapted to these newer ways of digital learning but have dialed their interest levels way up! They often supersede my lesson expectations and give me new grounding from which to jump off of in the future. The technology integrations as well as models of instruction have not become something to implement but rather a skeleton of how all things start in my classroom. I ask not what we can do with technology, but what technology will do with us!

NETS-S and the GAME Plan Process

The most important part of my GAME plan for reaching the NETS-T is effectively facilitating authentic learning experiences so that my students can reach the National Educational Technology Standards- for Students (NETS-S). Authentic learning comes from real-world applications and technology tools to allow multi-level independent and collaborative thinking. Learning becomes authentic when it is taken into the hands of the students and combined with today’s 21st century tools such as:
· Wikis
· Blogs
· Podcast
· Virtual Gamming
· Digital Storytelling
· Online collaborations
Students are then connected to a network of peer learners and an authentic audience. Learning can go so much farther than beyond our classroom walls and students can express themselves in new and efficient ways. The National Education Technology Standards for teachers are all a part of my GAME plan and will help maintain that my teaching continues to grow and continues to extend new applications to my students. Students themselves can mimic my GAME plan to set goals, actions, moinitor and evaluate their progress towards reaching all of the NET-S. I would love to have my students blog at the end of the year about what projects helped them reach their NETS-S GAME plan and how they feel they can use these applications in other areas of their lives.

Reflecting on NETS-T

Keeping current with the ning and blog sites that I have allotted time for has given me so many new ideas and applications to introduce almost daily in my classroom. This allotment of time (one planning period per week) is keeping me current on my professional development ideas. I am also carving out time to participate in online professional developments that are more particular to my classroom that what my district physically offers. Discovery education has become a favorite of mine for new resources and technology grants.

I am still working to get a distance classroom (Moodle) up and running. In the mean time I have created a classroom blog page instead of a website because I have found it easier to have feedback and participation from students and parents from outside of the classroom. My students love showing off to their friends and families when their artworks or projects make the headline. They also love connecting with one another beyond our four walls.

As stated in my previous update posting these goals are not ones to be met, but to be extended into new goals and to ultimately become a way of life in my classroom. I have created a time and space to work with digital storytelling via ePals. My students are also signed up for a community mural project and will be skyping with other students in the community to review their experiences. I feel this will give them a truly authentic audience both close to home and afar. I will also be soon initiating the problem based learning unit involving the leaning tower of Pisa, that is in the works. With this my students will use webquests, blogging, collaborative presentations tools along with critical thinking to repair their own learning tower of Pisa on a fixed budget. I can already tell from the current responsiveness that this will be a highly motivated learning project!

Turning my GAME plan into a way of life.

Thus far my actions have allowed me to meet 2 of my 4 goals and progress in the other 2 goals. I have effectively set up a classroom blog and am distributing the information to try and get parents and students to join in outside of class. I have been using it as a communication and presentation tool for those outside of our classroom. I have started collecting data (digital pictures, audio recordings, reflections and others) and am storing them in a created computer drive for eportfolios. In the last nine weeks of school students will organize a selection of their works and create new learning goals for the next year. I have joined a few PLC’s that I really enjoy, it was important to find ones that would give me the most useful information for my class with the least amount of searching. I have been dedicating one planning period a week to researching new technologies and applications for my class. This has helped in my future planning to apply the new technologies and concepts I am picking up. This process, seems to be a never ending cycle, as new questions arise almost daily and I begin to search and research new answers. Trial and error is still a big part of this, fine tuning new techniques and self-reflection has become very important!

Even when my goals have been “met” they will not truly me fully met. I feel my goals are more of a style than an actual think. Continuing my professional development and encouraging, Inspiring and facilitating real-world authentic learning to my students is something I wish to become a natural way of life in my class room and not a goal I intent to meet.

Moving right along...

In my quest to use a GAME (goal, action, monitor, and evaluate/extend) plan to reach two NETS-T (national education standards for teachers) I have now taken those goals, founds resources and used them to implement a concrete plan. My personal NETS-S goals are two Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity and Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership (please see blog entry titled GAME Plan for Technology Integration Success). With my collected resources and research I feel I am ready for implementation or action and monitoring of my GAME plan.

I have had plenty of resources and research to back up my goals and plans. I have found that leading a technology change is not easy! There are plenty of road blocks and security issues to deal with. From parents and administrations there are a lot of hesitations and security concerns. It can be frustrating to be all reared up and ready to go only to be stalled…Initially I was idealistically hoping for the supportive culture to depend on in my school and district. However, I understand that many of the applications I am suggesting are new and unfamiliar and with that said, I am planning to lead by example and hope the success that follows will encourage a look in the new direction. I truly feel that technology integration combined with UDL (universal design for learning) and DI (differentiated instruction) can provide the most authentic real-world learning experiences to each individual learner. So with those minor thought adjustments here is the plan:

· Join and participate in PLCs (professional learning community) and take part in distance and local professional growth opportunities.
· Set up Mrs. G’s classroom website.
· Make weblogs, podcasts and video uploading easily accessible to students and classes.
· Create an online class using Moodle for help, fun and classroom extensions that will change on the semester.
· Create eportfolios for students starting in grade Kindergarten to continue throughout elementary career.

I have joined the ning networking site of http://arted20.ning.com/. This site offers tools and resources from all over the globe. It also has presentations and distance training involving art and technology. I have furthered that by creating a more localized PLC by creating a page for WV art educators inside of the networking site. I have used a blog to store my lesson plans for a few years now, I am now in the process of extending that into a website that will serve as the home base for reaching my goals. The site will serve as a communication tool to reach parents, students and other teachers and administrators. The site will link to resources, Moodle sites, eportfolios, blogs, podcasts and video links. Getting students set up and familiar with login names, passwords and sites and the use of web 2.0 applications will be essential in furthering their real-world learning experiences. Moodle online class will be available for willing participants to refresh and extend learning experiences outside of our classroom walls. Finally, I am really excited to take our traditional construction paper yearly portfolios and turn them into a virtual portfolio of learning experiences throughout students elementary careers.

I am very excited about my goals and am carving out time to keep them on track. My next step is going to be to break down these actions into more manageable points and concept map them to track my progress. I am a visual learner and need to be on a schedule so I do not end up spending my entire planning period designing the logo for the website…Must Keep On Track! Also blogging my progression will provide a place to check back and more forward.

Resources for GAME Plan

Putting my GAME plan into action requires a slew of resources to achieve the goals and NETS-T standards. The first initiative and resource I will focus are a supportive community of people in my school building that have similar goals and teaching styles. Getting my principal, technology integration specialist and other teachers involved will be a great beginning. The next set of resources will come from continuing my education, updating my knowledge and reaching out for materials.

Below are a list of websites, blogs and such that I have found to be particularly useful in my GAME plan:
· http://www.iste.org/welcome.aspx The International Society for Technology in Education is the foundation of my goals in my GAME plan and offers an enormous amount of information pertaining to my goals as well as my students.
· http://www.p21.org/ My home state of West Virginia is one of the 11 schools using the Partnership for 21st Century Learning Framework.
· http://www.cast.org/ The CAST site is the foundation for UDL and offers great applications such as lesson plan checker, lesson builder, and book builder.
· http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholars will provide me with research articles to support my endeavors and continued professional development.
· http://www.technologygrantnews.com/ This site will keep me current on grants to apply for to continue to enhance my classroom technology.
· http://arted20.ning.com/ This is a digital PLC that offers me connections to teachers across the globe for ideas, feedback and learning opportunities.
The resources for my GAME plan will be ever changing and increasing. Using my Google Aggregator and StumbleUpon bookmarker will help keep my resources organized and easily accessible.