Course Reflection

The GAME Plan as described by Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2009) helps teachers and students become self-directed learners by setting goals, putting them into action, monitoring your progress, and evaluating and extending your learning of those goals. Throughout this course, I have developed and implemented a GAME Plan for facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity, and for promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility.

As a result of employing my GAME Plan, I have learned several new ways to engage and inspire student participating and learning through the use of technology. First, I have learned how to create and operate a wiki as a means of group communication on a project (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). I will use the wiki I created for my learning group as a model for my students. I have also learned multiple uses for digital storytelling and how this form of learning can be utilized in my 7th grade language arts classroom to access content. I am currently working on creating a WebQuest that I will use to introduce my students to the background and setting of our first class novel called Dark Water Rising that recounts the story of 1900 Storm that destroyed Galveston, Texas (Hale, 2006). My students will complete this WebQuest as a means of activating prior knowledge about Galveston, while also introducing them to the time period of the novel. I have also learned that I can incorporate my second goal, promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility into any lesson utilizes technology. In addition to teaching the QUEST model Internet inquiry, I also plan to incorporate mini-lessons on digital citizenship into each lesson that uses technology, as way of exhibiting to my students that we must always adhere to these standards when using the Internet or the intellectual property of others (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007).

Based on the progress of my current goals, I would like to set a new goal as a means of sharing the knowledge I have acquired in this course. The next NETS standard I plan to undertake is engaging in professional growth and leadership. This year, my school district has decided to become a BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) district. This means, we will encourage our students to bring their own technology from home to use in the classroom. Not all the teachers on my campus feel that they are prepared to meet their students on the technology field, so I have offered to assist any teachers that may need ideas on how to incorporate these new technologies into their curriculum. I plan to exhibit leadership skills in my school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources (ISTE, 2008).

I also plan to use the GAME Plan process with my students as a means of developing their personal learning goals and becoming self-directed learners (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). I will use my professional GAME Plan as a model for my students, so they can view how the process works before they set their own goals. I have even thought about having my students set goals within their work groups before they begin a new project. They could set goals on teamwork and collaboration.

As a result of my learning from this course, I have already made immediate adjustments to my instructional practices regarding technology integration. I have already planned to enter the computer lab the first week of school so my students can all create Google accounts. They will use these accounts as a means of communicating with each other and with the teacher. I feel that it is important for teachers and students to have a way to communicate outside of school. Learning and discovery does not end with the school day, so students should have the ability to share their findings and ask questions of each other outside of school. My students will also create a blog using Google’s Blogger service. Their blog will be used as a response journal and a means of reflecting on what they are learning in my class.

This school year, I plan to implement the problem-based learning activity that I created in this course. My students will discover the local issues we face with hurricane evacuations and gridlock, and create new plans, or improved recommendations to the current evacuation plans for the city of Houston. My students will use this instructional approach as a means of learning content at the same time they are developing their problem-solving skills and higher-order thinking skills (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009).

To develop my students’ online collaboration and social networking skills, they will create a personal blog for class reflections and literature logs. They will also create group wiki pages as a means of group collaboration on projects. These tools will be of great use students who are absent, or for my students who leave my classroom once a day to receive help with their Dyslexia. I will also employ private chat websites like Chatzy.com for my students to use while working on projects while they are in my classroom.

One of the most useful and meaningful instructional approaches I have learned in this course and plan to implement in my classroom are digital stories. Digital storytelling can be employed in any content area to build students’ skills in research, analysis, creativity, problem-solving and communication (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). My students will use digital stories to express themselves in an “All About Me” projects where they will detail their likes and dislikes, the important people in their life, their interests, and favorites places. They will also create digital book reports detailing their favorite book and post those on their blogs.

I have learned that technology can be utilized as a tool for engaging and supporting student learning of content; however, we do not use technology just for technology’s sake (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009). We must discover ways that technology can be used to scaffold and enrich student learning. I feel that the best way to integrate technology into your curriculum is by first reviewing your content area standards, and then create authentic learning activities that foster critical, and creative thinking skills while also incorporating technology.

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.

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: strategies for internet inquiry. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Hale, M. (2006). Dark water rising. New York, NY: Holt.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education
standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Promoting self-directed learning with technology [Webcast]. Technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Cennamo.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Enriching content area learning experiences with technology, part two. [Webcast]. Technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Davis.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Spotlight on technology: problem-based learning, part one. [Webcast]. Technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Ertmer.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Spotlight on technology: social networking and online collaboration, part one. [Webcast]. Technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Davis.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009). Spotlight on technology: digital storytelling, part two. [Webcast]. Technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD: Abrams.