Developing Your Personal GAME Plan

In order to strengthen my proficiency integrating technology into my classroom I have evaluated the NETS-T Standards and identified what I believe are my two weakest areas that I would like to improve. The first is Standard 4d: “develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital-age communication and collaboration tools”. The second area is Standard 5c: “evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student learning”.

GOALS:
Standard 4d: The goal I have set in regards to Standard 4d is to create a collaborative project assignment with a class from a different high school. As this is a brand new experience to me, it is definitely an area in which I am severely lacking. I will need to absorb as much information as I can during this initial project to help ensure success in future endeavors.
Standard 5c: Since technology is always changing and evolving, it is difficult to keep current, especially with all of the other roles that each of us plays in our own lives. In order to stay current, my goal is to implement one new educational technology tool into my classroom each month. This technology can vary in difficulty or size, but must be something I have never used in my classroom before and occur once per month. By the end of the school year, I will have tried nine new tools in an effort to stay current with technology.

ACTIONS:
Standard 4d: In creating a collaborative project assignment, I will need to take several actions. Researching previous collaborative projects and how they were performed will help give me information based on others previous experiences. This will help me narrow down timeframe, content, assessment, and communication. Additionally, I will need to contact several educators who either have experience or would be willing to learn with me in this endeavor. To do so, I would need to look at educational forums, blogs, and websites to help identify potential partners. Lastly, I would need to have constant communication to my collaborating partner to continually assess, evaluate, and receive feedback.
Standard 5c: Since the Internet is a vast ocean of information, it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for when you aren’t quite certain yourself of what that is. Thus, I will let others do that work for me and subscribe to several different educational technology blogs which will gather that information into one location for me. With the information coming to me instead of finding it, I have more time to evaluate and try different technologies and find ways to implement them into my classroom.

MONITOR:
Standard 4d: Monitoring progress will need to be done at the end of each segment to ensure that students are working collaboratively and meeting the requirements. Again, communication with my collaborating partner will be a key factor as we will be able to identify what successes we are having with the classrooms and what difficulties we encounter. We also need to let our students know that this is a learning process for us as well and that they need to ask questions and provide feedback whenever they need to.
Standard 5c: Monitoring for this Standard can be a little more tricky than others, but jotting down notes in my agenda and finding assignments whose assessments or instructional strategies I feel are lacking is a positive way to start. From there, I can look to pair a new educational technology into my classroom that will be fitting for the content I will instruct. I will have to record notes on student excitement, engagement, and degree of difficulty as well as promote feedback and questions from students to help enhance the new technology being used.

EVALUATE AND EXTEND:
Standard 4d: Evaluation for collaborative project will come from the level of involvement between the students from differing schools, the quality of work submitted, the amount of time involved, and weighing the pros and cons from the various components. Working with my collaborating partner would allow us to build upon the aspects of the project that were positive and change the aspects that were negative to help improve the project as a whole for the next time. Additionally, receiving feedback from the students (whether it be through surveys, reflections, etc.) is a great way to receive firsthand information about the project.
Standard 5c: To evaluate the effectiveness of using each of the new technologies, I feel creating a folder or document to keep track of the strengths and weaknesses of each that was implemented will provide beneficial when I seek to implement them again in the future. Also, any difficulties I encountered the first time around would need to be prominently addressed to prevent reoccurrences in the future. While every new tool that I implement in my classroom may not be used again in some format, the process will continue to help my classroom adapt and evolve with the technology of today and the future.