GAME Plan Update 7/29/10

How effective were your actions in helping you meet your goals?

So far, I have been learning all about new web sites that can be used in my History class. This week's text in chapter 13 gives me a number of web sites to use to find primary documents and information for my students to research during a problem based activity. These sites include Library of Congress, Do History, History Matters, and The History Inquiry project. I am current finding plenty of technology tools to be used in my classroom. I will have no problem implementing a new technology tool in the 9 lessons I plan on creating this year for my classroom. I feel I am right on track with my goals.

What have you learned so far that can help you in your teaching practice?

I have learned about a number of teaching strategies to promote creative thinking and authentic lessons. I feel very comfortable with my understanding of inquiry based activities, Problem based activities, and the different assessments to be used to create authentic lessons. I am constantly think of how I can incorporate more of these types of lessons into my current curriculum.

What do you still have to learn? What new questions have arisen?

I would like to improve on creating actual inquiry based activities and problem based activities. I need to spend some time reviewing my curriculum and developing these lessons. I have thought of ways to implement quick 1 day lessons in my classroom. An idea I had was to create a problem using a real student based issue that is directly related to a past historical event. I would allow the students to come up with solutions to the problem. Later, I would review their solutions in class. Discuss the relationship between their solutions and the actual events solutions. I would then have my students take a virtual tour of the event to gain further knowledge of the event.

What new questions have arisen?

Has anyone found good web sites that give more examples of actual problem based activities used in different content areas? I would love to see more examples in my content area.


How will you adjust your plan to fit your current needs?

My current needs are being met. I may adjust my plan to include weekly checks to make sure I am track to give a new lesson with in ever 4 weeks. I may also need to find times to sit down specifically for planning without interruptions from other colleagues.

Goals Update 7/22

This week, I am in the process of evaluating new internet tools. A number of people have sent me links to some pretty good resources. I am working through each link. I also have been going back through my delicious account (mrwright40) to review some tools I have gathered from the past that have never been used in my class. I do not plan on modifying my GAME plan at this time. Currently, I have several lesson plan ideas to work towards my goals. I have a flip camera recreation of a folk song activity. I have a Civil War and Ellis Island virtual tour. I have a group persuasive essay plan to be used with Google Docs. I have a Voicethread activity to be used with an upcoming field trip. I am also practicing working with prezi.com and animoto. I would like to use these in my classroom. I have a number of cartoon creation links on my delicious account that I am tinkering around with for upcoming lessons. I do not have any new questions that come to mind at this point.

Carrying out my Personal GAME Plan

Recently, I spent some time thinking about the types of technology tools I would like my students to be using in my classroom. I have knowledge of several tools that I have found useful for classroom instruction. Some of the tools I might consider to help me carry out my game plan are voicethreads, bubbl.us, prezi.com, blogger, animoto, podcasts, Google Docs, Google Earth, Virtual Tours, and teacher tools found at the Discovery Education web site. I have found it very convenient to collect tools as I come across them in my delicious account to be reviewed for later use. Has anyone found any sweet tools that middle school age kids might be interested in using for projects? This week's resources discuss giving kids options to complete assignments. I would like to try to be open minded about the ways my students will achieve their learning goals on my GAME plan activities.

I will need some additional information before moving forward with my GAME plan. I need to begin gaining a better understanding of the insides and outs of each learning tool to be used in my upcoming lessons. I also need to begin looking at my future content and start planning the first trimester lessons. Another task to focus on will be teacher paperwork like directions, hardcopy activity instructions, web postings, and discussion notes.

Other than thinking about possible lesson plan options or technology tools, I have not moved rapidly forward on my GAME plan. In the course of the next few weeks, I will begin to get back into school teacher mode. I hope to start pre-planning same activities that will fall right into place with the goals I would like to improve upon.

My Personal Game Plan 7/8

The two indicators I would like to improve on throughout the course of the next school year would be the following:

a. design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to
promote student learning and creativity.

d. model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze,
evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.

The GAME Plan

Goals:

I would like to be able to successfully integrate at least 3 relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity during each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

I would like to be able to model and facilitate the effective use of the digital tools before and during the the 3 relevent learning experiences to be created for each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

Take action:

I need to identify 9 digital tools that can be used during each relevant activity.

I need to become very familiar with each tool.

I need to evaluate which lessons these experiences will be the most useful for implementation.

I need to design plans to model and facilitate the effective use of each tool chosen.

I need to create a checklist and a rubric to be used during each activity to insure that each goal is being met.

Monitor:

I will need to make sure I have at least 3 lessons developed using a digital tool and modeling each tool at the beginning of each trimester. Independent professional development time will be the best times to create these activities.

I will use the checklists and rubrics during each lesson involving the digital experiences to monitor my progress.

I will have to monitor if problems are occurring that don't help me meet my goals.

Evaluate

I need to review the checklists and rubrics after each lesson to determine overall success of each goal.

If my goals have not been met after each trimester, I need to make changes to each lesson plan to insure success during the next application.

I will determine what went right and what went wrong after each digital and modeling lesson. I will make the necessary changes to improve the lesson.