To address the need of preparing 21^st century learners with appropriate skills, you will discover  that numerous grants are available to help you incorporate technology into your classroom. These grants vary in what they require you to do with the money and in how much money they offer. However, all of them requireyou to have a specific idea in mind when you apply.

Create a personal learning network and reflect upon the aggregated information posted by individualsin the field of educational technology. Think about your own experience either teaching, volunteering or being a student within a school in your community. Ponder the ideas posted by your peers in your personal learning network and think about your own personal experiences in using computers to facilitate learning. Can you come up with an innovative, cutting edge, standards-based, constructivist learning activity that is enhanced with computers, software or other technology to improve learning?

Objective:
Upon completion of this assignment, the ED 297 student will use aggregated knowledge received through a personal learning network and reflect on their personal experiences to describe how teachers can integrate educational technology effectively into a standards-based constructivist learning environment.

Scenario:
It is the start of new school year at Ala 'Ike school and principal Akano has sent out an email announcement to Gloria, Lani, Jeremy and Mark saying the school has received a $5,000 grant and that the money is available to those who wish to submit a proposal indicating how they would use the funds. Pick a teacher to work with and design a technology enhanced learning activity they can use at Ala 'Ike school. The money is to be used any way you wish to help integrate technology into your classroom. Your classroom has an Internet connection. Principal Akano is asking that you submit a classroom technology plan specifying how you intend to use technology to support your curriculum goals. Your technology plan will be judged by the following criteria:

• Goal Statement: How clearly is your vision for what you want to do with technology in your classroom stated?
• Need Statement: How justified are your needs? How clearly are the conditions of your classroom described? What is it that you would like to do but can't because of lack of technology?
• Curriculum Applications: How clearly do you describe how technology will be used to support your curriculum activities? What are some of the student outcomes?
• Technology Acquisition: How appropriate are your technology acquisitions in supporting your curriculum applications? Are the costs reasonable?
• Classroom Floor plan: How well does the placement of technology in your classroom support learning activities and provide an environment conducive for teaching and learning?
• Evaluation: How well do your assessment strategies apply?
• Diagram or outline of your personal learning network (must include at least one source from: Delicious, Twitter, an RSS)

Procedure:

1. Group into teams of 2, 3 or 4 to work on this assignment or work on it as an individual. If you are working in a group please elect one person as the group leader. Have the group leader email the instructor the names of everyone in the group.
2. Contact group members and agree on what your goals, needs, and curriculum applications will be.
3. Begin building and monitoring your personal learning network using iGoogle (each person will have their own).
4. Do your research on kinds and amounts of technology you will be requesting. Remember, your budget is $5,000. You will need to submit a purchasing list with a description of items, quantity and price. You may use pictures of items in your document.
5. Decide on how your floor plan will look. You should have a clear description of the layout. Please include a drawing to support your description, you may do so using the draw feature in Microsoft Word. It is also possible to use another drawing program and insert it into your document.
6. An evaluation plan should describe how you will find out how well your curriculum goals are being met with the implementation of technology?
7. Compile all contributions from group mates and save finished plan.
8. One partner submits your plan into the Assignment Drop box.

Format Requirements:
Design your document using Microsoft Word to include the following minimum requirements. You may add more if you wish.

• Title Page to include the title of your technology plan, names of the contributors, and date. This page should also include some kind of image appropriate to the proposal (such as a computer). This image may be original art, clip art, or a scanned image.
• Information page that includes your name(s), the name of the school, the number of students who will be affected by this grant, and a paragraph summarizing the project idea.
• Narrative pages to include:
• Goal- what you want the students to learn and the activities you are proposing for them.
• Curriculum application- Describe the learning activity and environment in enough detail that the grant committee can clearly see what you have planned.
• Technology Acquisition A table with budget information about the type of technology, quantity and cost. (For this project, assume that the computer you are requesting doesn't come with any software at all except a current operating system.) You should also include a short summary of each software title or website and why it is important to use. This summary should be less than a page for each piece of software or website you want to use.
• Groups If you are working in a group, provide a 1/2 to 1 page description of how the resources will be shared between two teachers and where the equipment will be kept.
• Drawing include a drawing of the ideal floorplan for your learning environment and paragraph describing why such a layout is neccessary.
• Evaluation describe how you will measure the benefits of your plan.
• Diagram or outline of your personal learning network (must include atleast one source from: Delicious, Twitter, an RSS)
• Blog reflection (Ning) please go to your blog area in Ning and post a reflection to your blog on what you learned in this assignment and how it can be applied to your career as a teacher.

Remember that this is a professional document. You are asking for money to support your classroom efforts. This means that everything should look good, be spelled correctly, and should be written using proper grammar.

Resources:

Date Due: February 16, 2010
This assignment is worth 25 points. Please create your plan using Microsoft Word then submit your plan via the Laulima Assignment area.

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