During this stage “you’ll determine whether you met your goal and reflect on whether your approach worked or whether you should modify your strategies for the future” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 5). This is where you determine if you were successful in achieving your GAME plan or not.
My first goal: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
· I have completed all the necessary planning to set up my observations of technology enriched classrooms. I have selected the teachers I want to observe and the technology devices I want to see used in their classrooms. Since school is out for summer I cannot complete any of these observations until the start of the next school year. I have already received some feedback from the other seventh grade science teachers in the district on how they incorporate technology into their classrooms. I have created a spreadsheet with all the ways they use technology. I plan on corresponding with these teachers and getting the details on exactly how they incorporate technology into certain lessons to address science content standards. I hope that many of the other science teachers will respond to my emails at the beginning of next school year because I sent my original emails at the end of the school year where teachers were busy finishing necessary items for the end of the school year. I think at the start of the next school year I will ask student to share ideas on how we can include technology in our science classroom for the year. Students may be able to come up with ideas that I or the other science teachers may have never thought of.
My second goal: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
· I am continuing to pursue my education through my Master’s program here at Walden. I have confirmed my meeting times with our schools technology director in August during our work days before the next school year begins. I have already begun to research professional technology conferences that will be held between September and December of this year. My goal is to have a list of three conferences that I can pitch to my principle during our work days in August. I hope to be able to attend at least one of the conferences I present to him.
I think the GAME plan process can easily be adapted into my classroom. I plan on sharing the GAME plan process with the rest of the teachers on my middle school team. I think the GAME plan is a great way to help students stay focused while completing longer and more detailed projects that require research. The plan gives students a guide line to follow while they work through an entire project on their own with the teacher only acting as a facilitator.
I learned plenty about different ways to integrate technology into my classroom. I was exposed to several new types of technology like social networking and digital storytelling. I had only heard of those terms before this class but through my course work I learned how to incorporate them into my curriculum to benefit my students learning. I learned that is fairly simple to create a wiki and to teach students how to communicate and participate on the wiki. Throughout the year my students complete several group projects in and out of class and by having each group create a page on our class’s wiki they will easily be able to communicate between group members when they are all not in the classroom. I also learned that digital storytelling has endless possibilities in a classroom setting. One way I plan on incorporating digital storytelling in my classroom next year is to have students create videos of their presentations. These videos can be simply of them presenting to the rest of the class or they can create a video for their presentation and narrate the information during the video. Through what I have learned in this class I will be able to improve my teaching and therefore improve my students learning.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
