A new way of life!

Utilizing the GAME (Goal, Action, Monitor, Evaluate/Extend) Plan has not only served up benefits for myself but for my students. It is a great way to organize thoughts and ideas as well as keep a current watch and reflection on your learning process. It is often that a student can tell me an answer but not tell me why they know that answer; the game plan allows us to actively participate in our own learning and decision making toward reaching various goals. With my GAME plan set in my first blog “Game Plan for Technology Integration Success” I had chose two National Education Technology Standards for Teachers, NETS-T as my goals. Through the progression of the 5 blog entries that followed I feel I have not only achieved these goals and turned them into authentic learning experiences for my students, but have made the commitment to maintain these goals as a way of life not as an ending marker. I wish for my classroom to be ever evolving, never to teach the same two years in a row and to not only meet, but highlight the individualities of each of my students.

The professional benefits of committing to life-long learning extend beyond the immediate resources I have connected with over the past 8 weeks. Joining social communities, collaborating with professional learning communities both near and far have both given me a wealth of knowledge, ideas and information to facilitate to my students. My students as well have not only adapted to these newer ways of digital learning but have dialed their interest levels way up! They often supersede my lesson expectations and give me new grounding from which to jump off of in the future. The technology integrations as well as models of instruction have not become something to implement but rather a skeleton of how all things start in my classroom. I ask not what we can do with technology, but what technology will do with us!

NETS-S and the GAME Plan Process

The most important part of my GAME plan for reaching the NETS-T is effectively facilitating authentic learning experiences so that my students can reach the National Educational Technology Standards- for Students (NETS-S). Authentic learning comes from real-world applications and technology tools to allow multi-level independent and collaborative thinking. Learning becomes authentic when it is taken into the hands of the students and combined with today’s 21st century tools such as:
· Wikis
· Blogs
· Podcast
· Virtual Gamming
· Digital Storytelling
· Online collaborations
Students are then connected to a network of peer learners and an authentic audience. Learning can go so much farther than beyond our classroom walls and students can express themselves in new and efficient ways. The National Education Technology Standards for teachers are all a part of my GAME plan and will help maintain that my teaching continues to grow and continues to extend new applications to my students. Students themselves can mimic my GAME plan to set goals, actions, moinitor and evaluate their progress towards reaching all of the NET-S. I would love to have my students blog at the end of the year about what projects helped them reach their NETS-S GAME plan and how they feel they can use these applications in other areas of their lives.

Reflecting on NETS-T

Keeping current with the ning and blog sites that I have allotted time for has given me so many new ideas and applications to introduce almost daily in my classroom. This allotment of time (one planning period per week) is keeping me current on my professional development ideas. I am also carving out time to participate in online professional developments that are more particular to my classroom that what my district physically offers. Discovery education has become a favorite of mine for new resources and technology grants.

I am still working to get a distance classroom (Moodle) up and running. In the mean time I have created a classroom blog page instead of a website because I have found it easier to have feedback and participation from students and parents from outside of the classroom. My students love showing off to their friends and families when their artworks or projects make the headline. They also love connecting with one another beyond our four walls.

As stated in my previous update posting these goals are not ones to be met, but to be extended into new goals and to ultimately become a way of life in my classroom. I have created a time and space to work with digital storytelling via ePals. My students are also signed up for a community mural project and will be skyping with other students in the community to review their experiences. I feel this will give them a truly authentic audience both close to home and afar. I will also be soon initiating the problem based learning unit involving the leaning tower of Pisa, that is in the works. With this my students will use webquests, blogging, collaborative presentations tools along with critical thinking to repair their own learning tower of Pisa on a fixed budget. I can already tell from the current responsiveness that this will be a highly motivated learning project!

Turning my GAME plan into a way of life.

Thus far my actions have allowed me to meet 2 of my 4 goals and progress in the other 2 goals. I have effectively set up a classroom blog and am distributing the information to try and get parents and students to join in outside of class. I have been using it as a communication and presentation tool for those outside of our classroom. I have started collecting data (digital pictures, audio recordings, reflections and others) and am storing them in a created computer drive for eportfolios. In the last nine weeks of school students will organize a selection of their works and create new learning goals for the next year. I have joined a few PLC’s that I really enjoy, it was important to find ones that would give me the most useful information for my class with the least amount of searching. I have been dedicating one planning period a week to researching new technologies and applications for my class. This has helped in my future planning to apply the new technologies and concepts I am picking up. This process, seems to be a never ending cycle, as new questions arise almost daily and I begin to search and research new answers. Trial and error is still a big part of this, fine tuning new techniques and self-reflection has become very important!

Even when my goals have been “met” they will not truly me fully met. I feel my goals are more of a style than an actual think. Continuing my professional development and encouraging, Inspiring and facilitating real-world authentic learning to my students is something I wish to become a natural way of life in my class room and not a goal I intent to meet.