Final Reflection 8/19/10

Developing my personal GAME Plan over the past 8 weeks has been very beneficial to me. I began back in July creating goals I thought I could accomplish that would really bump my classroom instruction to the next level. One of my original goals was 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. The other was to be able to model and facilitate the effective use of the digital tools before and during the the 3 relevant learning experiences to be created for each trimester of the 2010-2011 school year.

Once my goals were established, I began looking into the content I was teaching this year. I started looking for past activities that I could easily incorporate into my lessons. Our course textbook help give ideas for possible lessons or resources that could be used to support my goals. My blog posts have helped give me feedback from my peers about possible tools I could use to accomplish my goals. I am currently ready to use and model tools like bubbl.us, most Google Applications, voicethreads, screencasts, animoto, panoramio, and many others. Our course text helped give actual search engines for student research. The Library of Congress site is one that I will use on a regular basis.

The new learning that resulted from following my GAME Plan would be in the area of better understanding the different uses of the many tools I have been introduced to through Walden University. I also took the time to better understand topics discussed in our course textbook like promoting creative thinking, problem based activities, digital story boards, and social networking activities. The textbook really helped give an explanation as to why these types of activities combined with technology are beneficial to today's learner.

The most immediate adjustment I will make to my instructional practice would be to start teaching my students about the tools we will be using in class this year. I am also hoping to work with the computer teacher to help get our students proficient at using some of these basic tools. I would like to be able to introduce activities that require my students to use these tools without me spending large amounts of time reteaching the actual tools. I also plan on taking baby steps. I will probably create mini activities for practice before I actually require students to complete a large assignment.

This year is going to be my trial year. I plan on making a number of adjustments to my past activities to incorporate more technology. My monitoring and evaluating steps of my plan will be to monitor my practices and mark down positives and negatives throughout the year. I will make the necessary adjustments to improve each activity. I also intend on evaluating my new activities at the end of the school year to better understand what worked and what did not work this year. I am really excited to begin my journey.

Students and Standards

This week's discussion is how to use the GAME plan to help students develop a plan to meet the standards of the NET-S and NET-T. I would probably require my students to complete activities that are similar to the ones we have been completing over the last 6 weeks. I would have each student review the standards at the beginning of each trimester. I would have them pick one standard they would like to improve upon throughout the trimester. I would then have them create two goals for there GAME Plan. These goals would suggest ways the students would become proficient at these standards. I would then have them come up with an action plan to meet these goals. They would be required to create a plan to monitor their goals. At the end of the trimester, we would reevaluate their goals and decide if they had been met. If they had, we could set new goals. If they had not, we could figure out reasons for why they were not completed. We could then come up with a new plan to help become proficient at the goals. Each week during the trimester, we could evaluate our progress just like we have been doing in this class. I could have my students complete the work on a Google Document so that I could easily monitor their weekly progress and offer suggestions. These are just a few ideas on how I could help my students become proficient with the NET-S and the NET-T guidelines.

GAME Plan Update 8/6/10

I have learned that introducing social networking and collaboration tools can be a good way to get students involved in their learning. My current goal is to use new Internet tools at least 9 times throughout the course of the year. I plan on using a wiki and a blog this year to improve my classroom activities. I would like to use a blog page with my students to open up a discussion using all of the students I teach rather than the usual in class discussion between 30 students. I really want to engage some of my non-talkers in this type of interaction. I am always curious about everyone's ideas. I think wikis are pretty cool also. My unit plan engages students to use wikis to develop a plan to solve a PBL. I look forward to presenting these activities in class.

Until I get some students to teach, I do not plan on changing my goals. I plan on continuing my task of improving my knowledge of upcoming technology tools to be used in class. The best way I learn how to improve my use of technology is to actually try them out in a lesson. I jot down what I like and dislike about the tools. I look for possible problems in my current teaching situation. I then edit my plans to improve them for the next lesson. I really look forward to trying out my new skills in a couple of weeks.

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.