I have to admit that this week I have not taken nearly enough steps towards meeting my the goals in my GAME plan. I have gotten information about online communities from my peers in this class, as well as from my professor. I will need to spend some time looking over these in order to benefit from them.
I believe that I need to modify my plan by not just relying on my administration to point me in the direction of community connections. I need to find these connections and make them myself. Once I make the connections I will, of course, need to get them approved by my administration team, and hopefully this will help them see all that is out there to assist us in bettering our students learning environments.
This week I have learned that things don't necessarily come easy when it comes to technology. Not everyone is willing to learn new things and take the steps needed to improve themselves in a way that can help our students. While technology may be a great way to assist our students, many people are not willing to take the time and energy to learn the technology themselves.
The only questions that have arisen so far are how to find online learning communities and really how to benefit from them. I need to spend more time looking into these and seeing all they can really do for me.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Continuation of My GAME Plan
Sorry this is late..Baby Brain struck and I didn't post in time!!!!
This week I am reviewing my GAME plan. It is something I will do repeatedly over the next few weeks in this class and I look forward to bettering my self in the process.
In order to carry out my plan, I will need several things. The first of these is the support of the staff and administration at my school. Nothing can be done if help from these two sources cannot be received. I need people who are open minded and willing to accept the challenges that face us with technology. I hope to be able to find these colleagues and have already received a lot of support from my administration.
The additional information that I will need in order to complete my plan is about our community relations at a school and county level. I need to find out who our community partners are and who I can go to for help. I also need to find out the best ways to present and share my material and lessons with the community. To do this, like I said in the plan, I will need to sit with my administration and discuss my options.
So far, I do not feel that I have been able to take many steps in reaching my goal. One thing I did do was talk to my principal about technology in lessons and how I believed that students should think outside the box. She was so happy about this that she came to observe my students and I one day in the lab and brought a state representative with her. This was a HUGE step for me, as along with him came the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a large paper in Atlanta, and a photographer. Perhaps with this "press", my ideas will seem more valid and be more widely accepted by the people I teach and work with.
This week I am reviewing my GAME plan. It is something I will do repeatedly over the next few weeks in this class and I look forward to bettering my self in the process.
In order to carry out my plan, I will need several things. The first of these is the support of the staff and administration at my school. Nothing can be done if help from these two sources cannot be received. I need people who are open minded and willing to accept the challenges that face us with technology. I hope to be able to find these colleagues and have already received a lot of support from my administration.
The additional information that I will need in order to complete my plan is about our community relations at a school and county level. I need to find out who our community partners are and who I can go to for help. I also need to find out the best ways to present and share my material and lessons with the community. To do this, like I said in the plan, I will need to sit with my administration and discuss my options.
So far, I do not feel that I have been able to take many steps in reaching my goal. One thing I did do was talk to my principal about technology in lessons and how I believed that students should think outside the box. She was so happy about this that she came to observe my students and I one day in the lab and brought a state representative with her. This was a HUGE step for me, as along with him came the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a large paper in Atlanta, and a photographer. Perhaps with this "press", my ideas will seem more valid and be more widely accepted by the people I teach and work with.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
My GAME Plan
G-My goal is to strengthen two areas of the NETS-T. These two areas are “Model Digital Age Work and Learning” and “Engage is Professional Growth and Leadership”. With the first area, my main focus needs to be, and always has needed to be, “collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation”. I feel that I communicate well with students and parents by basic email or phone calls but other than that, I lack any digital tools as well as lacking as communication at all with the community. The other area that my goal would be to strengthen is to engage in professional growth and leadership. This standard states that you “participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning”. While I personally would like to do this, I find it hard to find peers that would like to explore these applications with me. I need to find a way to change this.
A-The action I would take to meet the first goal is to find meet with my administration to discuss what local community members could or should be contacted. I would like to explore my options about what would be the best way to connect with the community, parents and students all at the same time. I think the best way to do this would be with an online newsletter. This can easily be created and sent out to all the members of the community that I would like to communicate with. A newsletter could be created on a blog, which would allow for feedback.
For the second goal, I would need to think a little bit harder. My school does not really foster local or global learning communities, so the first thing I would need to do is to find these. While Walden has been a good source for this as of yet, this will change when I graduate. I would also like to find a community that my peers and students can visit as well in order to keep them up to date with all the new things technology has to offer.
M-The M in the GAME plan stands for monitoring. I’ll need to “monitor whether I (you) am making sufficient progress towards my goals and reflect on whether the strategies I have chosen are working” ( Cennamo, Ross, Ertmer, 2009). This, at the moment, is a little hard for me to figure out, at least for my second goal. The first goal is easy to monitor. I can create the class blog and keep track of how many people I send it to and who gets it, as well as who responds to my postings. The second goal could be a little harder to manage, especially now that I do not even know where to start in finding learning communities that will help with creative applications. I know that, for now, I can continue to use my Walden community as a place to learn new things and can easily measure my growth here. I can see how many new ideas and technologies I implement and how useful they are to my students. In the future I can do this with the new things I find.
E-Evaluation of these goals should be fairly easy. Have I implemented the new technology I have learned? (goal 2) Have I connected through technology with people in the community? (goal 1) I plan to see, through this class, if evaluating these goals is really as easy as it seems. I sure hope so!
I really do hope to follow through with this GAME plan. I also plan to present the idea of even having a GAME plan to my principal. We’re going through a rough transition right now and have some sort of plan could really help us get to our final product. While the GAME plan in the course is all technology related, I can see that it could be easily modified to meet the needs of our school and later pull in the technology aspects of it.
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.
A-The action I would take to meet the first goal is to find meet with my administration to discuss what local community members could or should be contacted. I would like to explore my options about what would be the best way to connect with the community, parents and students all at the same time. I think the best way to do this would be with an online newsletter. This can easily be created and sent out to all the members of the community that I would like to communicate with. A newsletter could be created on a blog, which would allow for feedback.
For the second goal, I would need to think a little bit harder. My school does not really foster local or global learning communities, so the first thing I would need to do is to find these. While Walden has been a good source for this as of yet, this will change when I graduate. I would also like to find a community that my peers and students can visit as well in order to keep them up to date with all the new things technology has to offer.
M-The M in the GAME plan stands for monitoring. I’ll need to “monitor whether I (you) am making sufficient progress towards my goals and reflect on whether the strategies I have chosen are working” ( Cennamo, Ross, Ertmer, 2009). This, at the moment, is a little hard for me to figure out, at least for my second goal. The first goal is easy to monitor. I can create the class blog and keep track of how many people I send it to and who gets it, as well as who responds to my postings. The second goal could be a little harder to manage, especially now that I do not even know where to start in finding learning communities that will help with creative applications. I know that, for now, I can continue to use my Walden community as a place to learn new things and can easily measure my growth here. I can see how many new ideas and technologies I implement and how useful they are to my students. In the future I can do this with the new things I find.
E-Evaluation of these goals should be fairly easy. Have I implemented the new technology I have learned? (goal 2) Have I connected through technology with people in the community? (goal 1) I plan to see, through this class, if evaluating these goals is really as easy as it seems. I sure hope so!
I really do hope to follow through with this GAME plan. I also plan to present the idea of even having a GAME plan to my principal. We’re going through a rough transition right now and have some sort of plan could really help us get to our final product. While the GAME plan in the course is all technology related, I can see that it could be easily modified to meet the needs of our school and later pull in the technology aspects of it.
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.
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