Tech Integration HUGE plan

Technologically speaking, I hope to accomplish many things with my students. I wish to open their minds to the vast amount of technology that is available today and make it educational, meaningful, and exciting to use for each student. Technology is a vital part in every person's life and as a teacher I feel it is my responsibility to integrate technology into the everyday school life of my digitally native students. I will also maintain a very open mind and understand that as I am a digital immigrant my students might be able to teach me as much as I can teach them. I will also strive to stay up-to-date and informed about as many aspects of new technologies as possible. Thanks to my CEP 416 class I am ready and willing to try my hand at various technologies whereas before I may have been quite nervous.

To fully integrate technology into my classrooms, I will first need a working knowledge of all the technologies I am planning to use. I will also need equipment. I know that my students might not have access to some of the equipment necessary to complete our work with technology, so I will need to make equipment available to these students. I hope that my future school will have access to computers, microphones, digital cameras, and so forth. However, if it should happen that it does not, I will seek out grant funding or ask a large corporation to sponsor some of the equipment for our classroom. I am a great shopper and know that I will be able to find the very best deal on all of my future equipment.

Additionally, to accomplish my goals with my students I will need to develop and maintain an open environment in which the students feel comfortable with the technologies and are willing to try them. I will be sure to address the newness of technology and specifically the ones we may be using and how we will grow with these technologies. In other words, I will stress that we do not need to be perfect with technology right away, but that as we work with them we will learn and progress in our skills. I will be honest with my students about the fact that even I, their teacher, makes mistakes sometimes but that this can also be a great learning tool.

To assess whether or not I am succeeding in my goals of educating my students about and through technology, I will create assessment forms for the various parts of their assignments. I will also keep a running tabulation of their progress with the various technologies. For example, I will compare a student's first blog posting with one of their last in the year. I will also ask for student feedback about their own work as well as that of their peers. I believe that this form of assessment is crucial for the learning to be meaningful to the students. I also plan to observe and evaluate timeliness of the students using the technologies. Someone who is new and unfamiliar with a certain tool will not be able to create within it at the same speed as someone who has learned the ins and outs of the tool. Also, I will observe the students and their eagerness to use the technological tools I share with them for other assignments or projects, some of which may not even be school related. For instance, maybe the student would like to create a digital slideshow of flowers for their mother on her birthday.

To document the process of my work with the students I will share all of my planning and sample work pieces via my online portfolio. I will also elicit student, parent, and colleague responses to my work and post this as well. I will be sure to have the students use first names or initials so that I will not have a problem sharing their work. I will also keep a journal or a blog of my reflections to the work that is happening and document how I change and adjust to the needs of my students, the changing technologies, and various other influences.

The lesson I would like to do for this project is based on a second or third grade classroom and incorporates many technologies. The lesson will be a 3/4 to full year undertaking. The basis for the lesson is learning about world culture and history but also basing it on the students' personal backgrounds and heritages. Upon reflection of the idea, I realized that I am slightly taking a Montessori approach to the way the lesson is structured. I want to start talking with the students about where they come from and then expand from a small area like a city, to a state, country, and world and then throughout the ages in all of these contexts, or as many as possible. Within this I want the students to explore their own heritage and culture and use this information to help inform and teach their fellow students. Depending on what the students find and wish to share at various times will depend on which technology they will be using.

Each student will have a blog where they can keep track of their thoughts, ideas, questions, and found information. The students will be asked to blog at least once a week in the first few weeks. The amount required will change depending on how students are moving along with their projects. We will also have a classroom blog where students will be asked to share at specific integrals. Each student in the classroom will have viewing access to all of the blogs and I will ask them to read at least 2 of their classmates' blogs weekly and respond. I think this will be helpful for students to share information and work on their language skills as well. It stands a strong possibility that some of my students will share the same cultural heritage and will be able to use each other as resources.

I would like the final project of each student to be an audio and visual trip through time and space using google earth and google maps. However, this will vary slightly depending on what the student learns and is able to share with others. Each student will be asked, rather encouraged based on personal interest in topics, to explore their own heritage through time. Some of the topics that will be encouraged will be with music, food, family size, careers, educations, living arrangements, house styles, clothing styles, social activities, languages known or learned, immigration, prejudice faced, important accomplishments, arranged marriages, books read or written, name changes and why, as well as other topics the students might think of. The students will be asked to explore these various aspects and make comparisons through the ages based on their specific heritage.

To prepare for this project, I will meet with the parents prior to the school year starting and ask them some brief questions about their family heritage. I would like to do this electronically, but will do this on paper and incorporate technologies into the lives of the parents throughout the year also. I will be prepared if a student or parents are not aware of their heritage and ask that student to pick another culture they are interested in to study. If this should happen, I will encourage this student to select a culture that is not represented in our class so that the students can receive a rounded study of world cultures and history. I believe that through this project the students will desire to study other cultures beyond their own and this will make for lifelong meaningful learning.

For the final visual trip, the students will be asked to incorporate the various aspects of the cultures using tags, embedded images, videos, soundbites, and text. I don't want to give the students a list of items they must include right away because I want them to explore on their own and find interest in the various topics. I also want the students to use each other as a resource and borrow the ideas of their classmates in their research. The students will be asked to present findings at least 4 times throughout the year to their classmates. The first presentation I would like to allow the students to use a podcast for. I feel that the students might be hesitant of public speaking and I would like to slowly transition them into this important feature of education and life. Depending on which material the students are studying I will suggest many technological tools. For example, I will encourage the students to create a role-playing scenario of discrimination that they or their ancestors faced. I will have the students create either a digital story using images of themselves in situations with sound bites or a complete mini-movie of the reenactment. From this I will also have these students research ways to combat discrimination and blog about as well as share through another tool like a podcast with their classmates and parents. I will record all presentations so that we can share our work with our parents and fellow school mates and teachers.

I would also like to assist the students in using a social bookmarking tool like delicious to share resources with each other. Another resource I would like to introduce the students to is the idea of pen-pals. This would allow the student to gather true to life images and information of life in the area where her family originated. The pen-pals could be online or through snail-mail. I believe that online would be the most appropriate considering our integration of technology. This would allow me to introduce proper email and online chat programs and etiquette to the students. All in all, this project will be a huge undertaking and involve many technologies.