Final Reflection

This course has been the roughest of all my grad classes to date. Going into the class, I expected that I was going to breeze through all the assignments because I am considered a very competent tech human at my school. I was blown away by this class. I feel like in some other classes I learned about teaching practices or strategies; in this course I learned about myself, about how much I did not know, and how much technology there is out there that I have never even remotely used. This course has already changed my teaching and it is not even over!

My GAME plan focused on my student’s group commercial project. They are currently working on this (and hating me because they have two projects back-to-back (one of which is over break)). I was / am really hoping that this project where they are identifying a product, audience, and rhetorical appeals is going to make their out-of-class project a touch easier. Based on what I really want out of this project (which is to utilize the students’ understanding of persuasive techniques), I would love to have started this whole project earlier in the unit. We talked about all of the components of persuasion as we went through the unit, but I would have tied more into the “now you do it” aspect along the way.

I changed my plan as I began to implement the project with the class: After introducing the project, I had each student individually come up with a product idea and the beginnings for persuading (indentifying audience and rhetorical appeals). When the students next meet, they will share ideas and then discard some, forming groups to work on the best commercial ideas. I think moving from model to individual to group is going to work out better than I had originally planned.

The other aspect I may change in the future is where the work for this project takes place. For their “big” solo project, the majority of work is online. For this commercial project, the totality of the work will be in class. The next time we do this project, I think I will split the work between online and in class to better make a step between “normal” work and what they will be doing solo over break.

I am really excited to starting using more of these techniques and activities in class. The next time we introduce a new author or a new time period, I think I will be creating a digital story as the background. After I do one for the students, I want them to be able to mimic my work as they will eventually use this tool to introduce their peers to other American writers.

All in all, this has been a very eye-opening class for me. I have learned so many new ideas for creating technological projects both individually and collaboratively and I look forward to implementing them in class. I learned more about time management in this class as the expectations were set very high. I am proud of the work that we accomplished through this course and am glad to have gone through it was my online colleagues.

still moving along

Quick recap of my GAME plan:
Students are going to create commercials to demonstrate a number of components including their ability to target an audience, skill in choosing and employing rhetorical appeals, scripting, storyboarding, filming and editing. Once all of this is complete, the students will be competing for best commercial.

We are still working in class on some of the persuasion (in this unit it is tied to the colonial American writers), and the students are getting really good at picking up examples of ethos, pathos, and logos in texts, commercials, and movies. (Guilty secret, today they had their choice of movies since it was the day before break and many of their classmates were gone. Once the movie started, they had to identify an argument presented in the film, and defend the claim with examples of ethos, pathos, and logos. They thought they were getting off easy!)

I have done all of the parts of this commercial project before, but am looking to raise the standard for the commercial, which leads me to the competition. This is where I am a little stuck. If they vote live and in class, peer pressure says a lot. If we present to a third party, that is skewing the vote. I want to do the voting electronically or online, but have yet to find a site that I really like. Suggestions?

The rest of the work is going well.
And my fall show is done, so I actually have free time. I ran a couple of miles every day this week! Of course, the informational meeting about the musical was today, so that break is short-lived. I am really glad it is holiday!

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

keep pushing

In addition to teaching English, I am the theatre teacher at my school. This is show week; I cannot wait for Sunday morning when it is all done and I can look forward to tearing it all down on Monday morning. Between now and then… no healthy sleep, no free time, and not a lot of focus on anything but the show. Rehearsal tonight was “OK,” but not great. Dress rehearsal tomorrow… ugh. But once it is all finished, I will be free for a few weeks until we start the musical rehearsals at Christmas.

Right now I am feeling a little overwhelmed. This class is asking a lot more out of time that I don’t have than the previous courses and I am not finding the free time during this season to do well. I have a student teacher this year, and her first lesson is tomorrow. I am actually really excited, partially because I did not have to make plans, but also because I am legitimately enjoying being a teacher to a teacher. I really want to push her to be a better beginning teacher than I was, and I am planning to incorporate a lot of multimedia and technology to help us both out.

Our students are going to be making commercials in a couple of weeks, and that means a lot more hands-on technology than my students generally get in class. Honestly, I am not really sure if “my human” (Ashlynn) knows how to storyboard, film, and edit, but she will learn. I am torn between allowing the students to use the website www.goanimate.com to make cartoon commercials, or if I will only let them use traditional commercial filming techniques. In order to make my human and I successful and to carry out our GAME plan of making successful commercials, I will need to make sure that all of my technology is prepared: cameras (we have four flip cams), mobile laptop lab, and a word processing program (in our case Microsoft Word). I would like to see if my colleague Brandon Nicklas will help us in our filming endeavors by allowing us to make a “documentary” of him making a commercial. Since Nicklas is the televideo teacher, he would lend gravitas to the process and the students are used to seeing his work with the morning announcements. Ashlynn and I will lead the students through brainstorming, script writing, storyboarding and then finally filming and editing. Last week a lot of my Walden classmates suggested various websites that I could use in order to allow voting for the best commercial, but I have yet to choose which site to use.

Once my life slows down after we close Saturday night, I will be off to commercials and planning for my reality show pilot (which I would love to tell you about, but am not sure what happens if any of you steal my idea).

GAME plan

I am fairly tech savvy. As I was looking through the NETS-T indicators, I saw many which interested me, but that I had to purposely avoid. With everything going on in my life right now, I do not think that I can commit to anything that makes me a leader of a team or committee. (After graduation, however…)

One aspect which caught my attention was attractive to me because it alluded that I could have fun, too. The NETS-T indicator which states that I will “Model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments” seemed like one that was right up my alley (International, 2008). Not only do I get to teach my students about the technology and then see them utilize it, but I get to model it as well. My students will be making commercials soon and I plan to make a couple of my own (hopefully with some colleagues) to show as high-standard examples. I also would like to make some (seemingly simple) animated clips through a website called http://goanimate.com/ which the ESOL team at school used in a professional development recently. I would like to become more proficient at creating short animated or film movies and will try to make one a month in class.

Another alignment I would like to use more in class is one in which I will “Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching” (International, 2008). The majority of the projects and assessments that I give now are paper-based and I feel that both the students and I would enjoy more and get more out of a project that is more technological and exciting than typing a paper. I will try to manipulate the assignments that I am required to give to my students so that we can move more in this direction.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

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I'll work on getting this blog a little cooler in the near future.

-Dan