I feel like I am successfully moving towards achieving my GAME plan. All of the information from my colleagues and blog postings has been very helpful and resourceful. To modify my action plan I am going to use the information from comments made earlier this week. I want to survey my students to see where they stand with technology knowledge. I think that process would offer the assistance I am looking for because it would help me find a starting point for achieving my GAME plan. So far I have learned that achieving a goal takes time and patience. Just because it seems like an approachable task, it still takes lots of time and research. Lastly, I still continue to ask myself if parents or guardians would be “on-board” with using technology as the primary form of communication. Also I wonder if my school district would allow blog sites or if I would have to jump hurdles to achieve that goal?
Robert to Caryn-
ReplyDeleteWhen you survey your students, you may also want to conduct a little hands-on webquest to see if they can perfom some simple tasks like using extensions and checking the URLS for validity. I spent some time exploring Webquest.org and they have templates that make creating webquests easy.
As far as the parents go, maybe there are some parents who are very tech-oriented in their work who could come in and volunteer their skills for a day or two.
I have had mixed levels of success when going to administrators about blogs. For me the best approach has been "ready, fire, aim" when working with technology. Recently I wanted my students to use Wordles and found the site was blocked. It took three days of work orders, phone calls and permission slips to do a very simple unblocking of the site. Next year, I think I will bundle my reqeusts at the beginning of the year and make sure I clear everything with the principals. My blog at edublogs needs to take emails, but they have a strict privacy policy so you may want to check them out.
Unfortunately, schools are under a lot of pressure to protect students and avoid lawsuits, and this means that kids may not get access to all the useful tools out there. The benefits far outweigh the risks, and as teachers I think we (and parents) should have the final say in what our students can or can't use. If we make the assignments engaging enough, students will have little reason to use the technology in a harmful way.
Best of luck!