Week 5-Evaluating My GAME Plan

I have now been working on my GAME plan for three weeks. In this post, I will evaluate the progress I have made and readjust my plans as necessary.

Goal #1:
Indicator 3d-teachers “model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).

For this goal I have been focusing on helping my students learn how to evaluate web resources. I reread November’s (2008) book on the subject and created a checklist for use in my classroom based around his REAL strategy. (Email me if you want a copy.) The checklist was a great idea I received from commentors here, and I think it will really help students stay focused. I eagerly anticipate using it so that I can see how effective it is at helping students recognize the characteristics of a trustworthy source. I have also designed a lesson for whole group discussion around the Pacific Tree Octopus spoof website. I hope to do this lesson next week before the students start a project in their English class that requires them to research. (We have teaming at my school so this will be very helpful to my colleague.) At that point I will have some information I can use to evaluate the effectiveness of the checklist. The true test will be when students use the strategies on their own, however. So, I need another week to see what I can do to further refine my GAME plan for reaching this goal.


Goal #2:
Indicator 5a-I will “participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).

Last week I adjusted this GAME plan to focus on joining the Starboard IWB community. I set myself a short-term goal of watching some of the webinars available on the site and a long-term goal of creating a lesson to upload to the lesson community. I did watch one of the webinars and learned about a few new tools such as the stopwatch and screen capture. I have already started using the stopwatch to time my entry tasks. It would have been more helpful however, if I had watched the webinar while next to the IWB. Then I could have practiced while watching the webinar. The more I practice and learn about the board, the more seamlessly I will be able to integrate it into my instructional practice. I still need to discover the requirements for adding a lesson to the Starboard community, though. I would like to see if I can create a lesson that fits with my first goal. So my new plan is to work on fusing the evaluation lesson into the IWB software. That way I can possibly use that as my lesson to upload.

International Society of Technology in Education. (2008). NETS for Teachers. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators. Thousands Oaks: Corwin Press.