GAME Plan Reflection

In my Game Plan reflection I would like to begin with a quote that I used in my first blog. The GAME plan enables you to customize your approach to learning tasks, to develop relevant skills that are important to you and prepares you for lifelong learning (Cennamo, 2009). The two National Education Standards for Teachers that I decided to work with were:


1. facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity

. 2.be to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility

Throughout this course I learned how to develop new lessons that would inspire my students to go beyond what was expected of them. I developed new lessons that would give my students an opportunity to explore who they are and use their personal creativity. In my English class my students enjoyed doing the web quest and getting out of the classroom to work in the computer lab. When it comes to digital citizenship my students still have a ways to go but they are trying to give credit where it is due and that is an improvement.

From this course I learned so many things. My favorite new concept is digital storytelling. I have not had a chance to use the new digital storytelling lesson that I developed but I look forward to the chance to put it to use. I plan on trying it out myself but I can imagine how much fun my students will have creating this project.

The immediate modifications to my instructional process is to include more time for technology in my classroom. I know that I will have to schedule more computer lab time in to my planning. I will also have to make it my goal to make sure that my students have the basic computer knowledge. It is really shocking to see how little my students know about technology. I will also have to make sure that my students know that technology can be very useful in an English classroom. When I took my students to the computer lab for a couple of days before spring break I often heard my students complaining that they were in the lab again because this was an English class and not a computer class. They need to be made aware that technology can benefit them in every class and my GAME plan will help me teach them this.



References:


Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf.

GAME Plan Future

Next year I feel like for my students to fully benefit from the GAME plan I should use it from the very start.  A whole semester would be needed for my students to learn everything that I could teach them in this manner.  The GAME plan process takes a lot of time and revision.  To help my students develop proficiency in the technology standards I would have to spend a lot of time with them in the computer lab.  I wish my hands were untied but policy keeps me from doing a lot of things that I would like to do.  Maybe next year I can reach out to some of my colleagues and work towards this change.  A partner in crime would help a lot.  I am also thinking about talking to the other English teacher who deals with the kinds of students that I have and maybe working together on a couple of lessons.  Maybe we could make our year more enjoyable and less of a fight for control. 

Continued Evaluation of my GAME plan progress

When it comes to facilitating and inspiring student creativity I have come to the conclusion that it is a lot of work. This week my students have been working on web quest and creating many different forms of writing. We have spent a lot of work in the computer lab and some of my students still are not finished. I heard complaints about the amount of work from some of my students and others loved the activity we were doing. I will never be able to please everyone. I am still working on my goal of setting up a classroom blog and wiki. I set up the blog but I have not figured out how to get the students to log on. My students do not have school email accounts so would they have to set up a personal account for this assignment? Would I get in trouble for this? Will I have to get permission from someone before all my final details are set into place? Looking back at my goals I realize that I am also working on goal number two which is to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments even though I originally did not set this as one of my goals. Honestly I do not know what I will try differently to extend my learning. I am so overwhelmed right now. The second semester is not the time to be trying all of these new ideas. Between testing, grades and having limited holidays there is a lot on my plate. I need a break.

Revisiting GAME Plan Part 2

Finding information for modeling digital citizenship has not been a problem at all. This week I took my students to the computer lab to complete a web quest. There were multiple task that had to be completed and my students were required to create a citation page to include with their work. This was a very frustrating event for me. My students were putting up road blocks when it came to citing their sources. After the frustrations that I endured when it came to citing sources I will have to find some way to make this meaningful for them. Right now my students do not see a reason for citing sources and giving proper credit. How can digital citizenship be made meaningful for my students? I will have to think hard on this one.


When it comes to the blogging and create a wiki for my classes I feel like this will not be a problem for my students. Two of my classes have created wikis but I don’t believe they see the full potential of collaboration. I am going to have to work hard on this and model what they should be doing with their class wiki.

Sadie