Blog #6: TPGP

Professional Growth Plan

Goal #1: Maintain and continue to develop appreciation for the language arts.
Objectives to track progress:
- I will set aside two hours of time to read for pleasure (nothing related to school) every weekend
- I will try to stay “current” by reading books and watching movies that are popular with my students
- I will set aside one hour every week for writing poetry and fiction
- I will try go to at least 3 live performances (spoken word, drama) each year
It is very important that I continue to enjoy reading, writing, and viewing language arts texts. It was my passion for these pleasures in my personal life that convinced me to pursue a teaching career in this subject area so it will be important for me to continue to build on the joy I derive from the language arts so that I may share it with my students.

Goal #2: Focus on inquiry-based learning.
Objectives to track progress:
- I will continue to build units using Intelligence Online to develop my understanding of what makes a successful inquiry project and to build my repertoire of meaningful and engaging projects, activities, and tasks
- I will include at least one meaningful and relevant inquiry project that will provide students with an enduring, empowering, and memorable learning experience each time I teach a course
Although it is difficult to conceive how inquiry-projects will succeed in a classroom environment that is hypothetical, it will increase my understanding and proficiency in terms of planning and assessment. Even if these units will need to be modified to meet the needs of future students, the process of planning and designing will be beneficial in terms of building resources and confidence in my ability to provide meaningful learning opportunities for students through inquiry.

Goal #3: Continue to develop strategies for effective use of current technology.
Objectives to track progress:
- I will continue to identify tools that can contribute to learning, and seek to discover there potential to be incorporated into an ELA classroom by engaging with them in my personal life
- I will participate in any use of technology that I expect my students to engage in (ie. Blogging)
- I will compile a collection of resources of current technological tools and software that I determine might be useful in the future
I believe it is important not to rely on students to instruct you on how to use technology in the classroom. This is not to say that they can’t contribute and be an ally to teachers when they are less familiar with technology than the students, but it is important to complete the same process as the students in order to anticipate learning opportunities as well as challenges. Consequently, I am determined to engage with the technologies I will incorporate into the classroom in my personal life, so that I might make experiences as relevant and meaningful as possible for my future students.

II-Self-Assessment

Blog #5: Independent Inquiry Self-Assessment

One of the major challenges I encountered during my inquiry was a lack of consistency in terms of terminology and the technology being used in the field. This is a real issue that is facing professionals that are working to increase acceptance of a cutting-edge approach to learning. It was also an issue that created a great deal of confusion for me throughout the course of my research. As a solution, perhaps to the detriment of my argument, I tended to rely heavily on sources that seemed to share similar visions and ways of discussing the topic. My decision to reduce the scope of my inquiry in order to avoid confusion may have resulted in a perspective that seems to ignore certain elements of mobile learning, but I chose instead to include only information that I found personally relevant. Unfortunately, I made some assumptions about the transferability of terminology and concepts, but the scarcity of consistency in the body of research I consulted made this necessary. In some cases, I consulted research that concerned a function of a certain mobile learning device (especially PDAs) to support my arguments for other technology that serves the same purpose with the same framework or software.
At the beginning of my inquiry, I envisioned discussing the benefits of a greater variety of tools.
Ultimately, I settled on discussing only mobile phones and the iPod Touch. I was determined to discuss cell phone use because it seems natural to try to capitalize on the fact that students so frequently own their own cell phones. I remember sitting in on a PD day during my first practicum where the school was discussing purchasing personal response systems and thinking that it was misguided to invest hundreds of dollars in a technology that is so inflexible. Cell phones and iPod Touches are so much more versatile and engaging, and they are the students’ devices of choice. I must concede that the best case scenario for mobile learning is a laptop computer but these are affordable options that should be considered.
My perspective on technology has changed over the course of my inquiry during semester 4. I’m not sure if you would disagree with me Dr. J, but in many cases the use of technology is in itself a learning experience if it is properly supported by the teacher. Text message poetry is a great example. It goes without saying that text message poetry is not something you would do often with a class, but what a great way to talk about how language changes and to talk in a novel way about creative choice in poetry. Anytime you are creating a text you must consider your audience, and the experience of your audience is influenced by screen size of the intended device so again, critical consideration of creative choice is necessary when creating representations on mobile devices. This may not justify all uses of technology, but in ELA there is enough room for these technologies and I believe students would benefit from the experience.
I did not have the opportunity to really experience using the technologies I was writing about during my practicum, but I did interview my semester 3 partner teacher Mr. K who got funding for a class set of iPod Touchs. This was helpful in the sense that it reinforced my belief that the iPod can be incorporated into the classroom. Mr. K is planning to use the iPods word processing capabilities for personal responses, blog posts, and other short written documents. During my inquiry the interface was one of the greatest concerns with the use of PDAs that students repeated in the literature, but the iPod Touch’s keyboard is very intuitive and fairly large. It will be interesting to hear how Mr. K’s students enjoy using the iPods.

Integrated Unit: Self-Assessment

Completing this integrated study caused me to focus on the purpose of using technology. Because access to technology is sometimes limited, it is important that the time spent is purposeful and meaningful. In this study, technology is used to enhance the effectiveness and potential of a genre of storytelling by increasing the possibilities for communicating visually with the reader and increasing the level of interaction with the text. In other words, the technology expands the creative possibilities for the author and enhances the experience for the reader. It is often difficult to determine whether or not technology used in language arts is being used effectively because there are many task specific tools that are created to simplify and speed up tedious processes (script writing programs, concept-mapping programs). However, seeing as these are the tools used by authors in the real world, often produce greater proficiency, and allow students to publish and contribute to the literary community, they should be considered meaningful uses of technology.
Choose Your Own Adventure stories inherently demand that the reader interact with the text in a unique way. Creating an online interactive story enhances the experience even further by allowing the author to provide more self-contained and controlled interactions through hypertext links to different pages. While the traditional novel format would have pages with multiple choices and paths on the same page, using a webpage with a separate page for each choice allows the author increased control about the information readers are viewing and reading in order to make their choice. Another advantage of using Iweb is that it allows students to publish their interactive stories and share them with other students, family members, and the world. Also, podcasts are used for self-assessment and mind-mapping tools are made available to allow students to represent their learning in a way that capitalizes on their strengths.
Completing this integrated unit enhanced my understanding of the potential uses of web-authoring software. One of my goals for professional growth is to increase my familiarity with technology resources that are common to Calgary area schools. Consequently, I focused on Mac software that will be accessible on school computers (provided they use Macs). Using Iweb to create an online story teaches students (and me!) how to effectively use hypertext links. I also used two web-based tools, mind-mapping and Gcast, which I could use for a variety of purposes in the future. I was hoping to use Webspiration, but the site has temporarily closed sign-ups for new accounts. Planning a unit on IO also taught me how to use the site as part of my planning; particularly for creating meaningful tasks that can be adapted to fit contextual needs of a classroom for future use.
I was excited about using Gcast for phone-in podcasting in the future. Unfortunately, Gcast has begun charging for this feature. Nevertheless, Gcast can still be useful if access to other technology that can be used to create a podcast (Garageband) is available. Also, Iweb can be used for many different purposes and the experience of seeing student work publish to the web is very meaningful for students. It allows them to see what others are doing and to share their work with the greater community.
There are many opportunities for me to improve on my integrated unit. I received a great deal of valuable feedback from my peers. Many of them offered suggestions for different types of learning opportunities and cross-curricular connections. One element missing from this unit is the opportunity to consult an expert in the field. If it were possible, it would be useful to consult an author (not necessarily one who has written a Choose Your Own Adventure story) to help with the writing process or an expert in web design to help with the process of creating a website. In response to the feedback, I will be making improvements to my integrated unit and try to be more explicit with some of the expectations; particularly clarifying opportunities for feedback from peers, parents, and the teacher.