As mentioned last week, the GAME plan philosophy, stems from the idea of establishing a goal, taking action on that particular goal, monitoring progress and evaluating the goal and its' effectiveness (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). I was able to meet with my technology teacher today to discuss my GAME plan, and was informed of a meeting that took place yesterday after school which directly relates to both of my goals for my plan.
My technology teacher told me that my county is completing doing away with blogs as a usable resource for students within the schools. The county has decided to use wikis instead, due to the fact that they are much easier for the teacher facilitate and maintain. I was told though that the county will be purchasing a license for every student and this change will go into effect starting January 1, 2010. While I understand the philosophy behind this change, I am now faced with transforming my students' work from blog format to a wiki. Some of my classes were able to already create their own wiki, but I will need to seek more information on licenses and finding the time to establish user names and passwords for my intermediate students. I am fortunate to still have the ability to use wikis as a form of communicate between myself, students and parents. Wikis will allow my students to "work individually, in pairs, or in teams to post or respond to postings" (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 98).
In addition to changing my blogs, I will also need to make changes to my plan for a classroom website. At the same technology meeting that was held yesterday, the county discussed classroom websites and determined that a private classroom setting outside of our domain would no longer be permitted. As a result, I will have to add my classroom information to our school website in order to adhere to county policy. I still plan on using Microsoft Front Page to design links and organize my classroom information. This change will also force me to make changes to the idea of having students complete homework online, due to the size limit of 20MB. This change will also go into effect on January 1, 2010.
Over the next few weeks I plan to continue to research these changes and develop new ways to put my GAME plan into action. I would love to hear if anyone else has experienced this dilemma and if so how it was handled.
As always, thanks for your feedback.
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.
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While I understand that as we go forward with technology, there is going to be a learning curve at the county office level, I hate seeing this type of sweeping policy change take effect with such a short period of time for teachers to regroup, redesign, and reconnect. I think it is unfair to give you less than a month to change what has been working for you this year. It would be much fairer to you and your students if this new policy were to take effect at the beginning of the new school year.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, you asked if anyone else has experienced this dilemma, and the answer is yes. I was an ITS until a year and a half ago and this very thing is one of the reasons why I left the department and went back to the classroom. Many of those in the decision-making positions have been out of the classroom for so long, they do not understand (or remember) what it is like and are more than likely making such decisions from a limited knowledge base, especially the decision about blogs. Decisions are made without thought for the classroom teacher then are filtered down through layers of other employees who have to go out and break the news. I absolutely hated giving teachers this type news but in our county, arguing with the decision-makers was a lesson in futility.
Well, I'm glad to hear that I am not the only one. I was able to meet with my technology teacher on Friday and we set up a day to convert the blogs over to wikis. While this task will in fact be daunting, I look forward to managing the wikis as opposed to the blogs. I will have a chance to group students and have them post to the discussion section of the wiki. I have tried to look at the positives of this change, as opposed to being frustrated with my current situation.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, it certainly makes me feel better.
Rachael,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear that you won't be using blogs anymore. It sounds like you have a good back-up plan by using wikis. As educators I think we have to be ready for change and accept it in order to survive, no matter how hard it can be.
I am curious as to how you will convert them and how many do you have to do? I'm asking because as you commented on blog, I may be faced with this same problem. I still haven't received an answer yet. Hopefully tomorrow I will.
I hope you will keep your positive attitude as you go through a transition period.
Good Luck!
Gayla
Rachael,
ReplyDeleteThat does seem to be very inconvenient to have to abruptly switch your technology choices during the school year. It would make much more sense to make the decision to use wikis instead of blogs start at the beginning of the next school year. I bet it has to do with money. As the wiki licence/contact starts Jan 1st and the school district wants everyone to use them right away since that is when they starting paying for the service. If that were the case I would think that they should let teachers gradually transition from blogs to wikis for the rest of the school year. On a more positive note it is great to hear that you have already met with your technology teacher and that he or she is going to help you during this transition. It’s good that blogs and wikis are similar and it might even be easier as you could have one central wiki with each student getting a page to use like a blog. Then it would be easy for the students and the teacher to review each students work.