Sosnoski Week 4- Monitoring my GAME plan progress

This week I made a lot of progress toward my goals. Woohoo! I set up the first prompt for my students on my biology blog: http://sosnoskibiology.blogspot.com . This prompt asks students to reflect on their favorite and least favorite topics so far this year. This will help me see what students are enjoying and what needs to be spiced up next year. I made the requirements very "Walden style." They have to make a post by a certain day and respond to two classmates' comments by another day. Students will start this when we return to school from Thanksgiving break. As the year goes on, these prompts will require more content-specific reflection, but I want to start with topics that will be easy for students to write about so they develop a copacetic attitude toward writing their responses. My only question is--how often should I have them do these? That is something I will need to really think about.


For my second goal, I discovered many resources that could help me in my quest to develop an authentic ecology experience for my students. While talking with some colleagues about my goal I found that there is a program in our community called IPEI-- Ithaca Public Education Initiative. This organization's purpose is to link teachers with members of the community to provide extended learning experiences for students. Not only will they help you figure out the best connection to make, but you can apply for a Red & Gold Grant, which puts $500 toward your endeavor. I e-mailed the coordinator to ask for ideas regarding teaming up with some community organizations or Cornell University to do an authentic ecology learning experience. I have not heard back yet, but I am excited for their help! My biggest question is how I am going to organize all of this with such a packed schedule. I am teacher 20% over time and rarely even get to eat my lunch. I think I'm going to request help from my department chair.

Week 3 Sosnoski- Reviewing my GAME plan

In order to carry out my plan regarding the authentic ecology experience, I will need to reach out to the Ithaca community to see what programs currently exist for students to study the ecology of the area. I know that several of my colleagues have conducted field work with their classes at the creek behind the school. I would like to illicit their ideas for how to engage my students in an authentic learning experience related to ecology. This additional information will allow me to better formulate an effective and authentic experience. So far, I spoke with an elementary school teacher close by who I know does many stream study experiences with her students. She informed me of some of the activities she does with her students and I began thinking of more advanced activities I could do with my own students. 

As far as the blog is concerned, I will not need many resources, as the blog already exists. It is just a matter of using it! I need to think about the requirements for these posts that I want my students to do--should it be extra credit at first and gradually lead to a graded activity? How often should I have the students blog? If these blog posts are required, what will be the consequence for not completing them? If they are not required, will I provide an incentive for completing them? These are all questions I keep going back and forth with in my head. Any suggestions from colleagues would be greatly appreciated! I have not been able to find anyone in my school who has used blogs to promote student reflection.

GAME Plan--Sosnoski Week 2

As I reflect on the NSTE NETS-T standards, I feel pretty confident that I am proficient in many of the standards; however, there are two I would really like to increase my confidence in:

a. engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources

c. promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.

As Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer (2009) discuss, authentic learning situations increase student motivation. If we can spark our students' interest an provide a challenge, "we are more likely to engage them in the topic at hand and to prompt them to take ownership of their learning"(Cennamo et al., 2009, p. 37). Although I believe in the benefits of authentic learning situations, I often find myself bogged down by time restrictions. I would like to break through that barrier this year.

In addition to this, performance indicator "c" involves using tools to view student thinking. I feel that I do not allow my students to reflect on their learning often enough--again, due to time constraints. I strongly desire to change this and to use technology to better facilitate the process. I have created a GAME plan in order to improve my confidence in these two areas (Cennamo et al., 2009)

Goal 1: to develop an authentic learning activity for my 9th grade biology class on the topic of ecology
Goal 2: to better utilize my classroom blog in order to involve students in reflective thought regarding their learning in biology

Action: I will research how other teachers have provided students with authentic learning experiences in ecology. I will also research the school and community resources available to me in this situation. For goal 2, I will begin to require students to post on my blog once a week, answering a question that requires them to reflect on their learning for that week.

Monitor: As I progress through reaching my goal, I will assess whether there are sufficient resources to provide an authentic learning experience for ecology. If not, I will choose a different unit of study to investigate. I will also monitor the level of student engagement in the blog reflections--are students giving thoughtful answers? Are my questions and the student answers clarifying their conceptual understanding and thinking? If not, I will have to alter the format of my questions or the requirements.

Evaluate: After these endeavors, I will reflect on the effectiveness of providing the authentic learning opportunity and using blogging to promote student reflection.  Using student surveys, I will ask students how they felt about the authentic learning experience and how they felt about the blog postings and how effectively they feel the two strategies helped them learn. This will give me valuable data for my next goal.

I hope that by following this plan, I become more confident in these skills. I also hope that as I share positive results from this experience with my school community, it will have a "ripple effect," motivating other teachers to engage in this type of self reflection and goal setting (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).



References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom
use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Promoting self directed learning with technology, part 1. [Video webcast]. Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/ default. learn? CourseID=6072063&Survey=1&47=6819430&ClientNodeID= 984650 & coursenav=1&bhcp=1

Welcome!

Hello,
Welcome to my blog about integrating technology in science. I hope we all learn much from this blogging endeavor.