Week 6-Revising My GAME Plan

I’m revisiting my GAME plan in order to share with you the progress I have made and plans for the future.

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).

This goal has resulted in the production of a checklist for students to use when evaluating websites. I have even shared it with the history department at my school and have asked for feedback from those teachers on how it works. I hope that the checklist will become a school-wide tool. From this experience, I have learned the value of taking time to ensure that students can successfully determine the validity of information. I still have to work on helping students locate information before I can consider this indicator met though. To do that I need to first expand my own search techniques. For example, I need to try using Google Scholar when looking for research in my Walden classes. I would also like to look through Google’s educator lessons on search techniques. I am sure they have many ideas that I can use to teach my students how to locate information.

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).

For this goal I have not made as much progress. I made a lesson using my Starboard to share with others on the IWB lesson community, however, I don’t feel like it is good enough to share yet. The assessment I gave students after the lesson presentation did not show improvement, so that indicates that there is room for me to make the lesson better. Then, my IWB stopped working this week and I had to spend an hour with tech support to fix it. So, I am going to continue to work on using all of the features of the board to create an interactive lesson that engages my students and would be useful to others. I will also search for more lessons I can use as examples. The Starboard lesson community grows everyday, so I just need to continue to communicate with them. They have already provided some helpful hints on engaging tools to use like the highlighter. As I continue to work on this indicator, I hope to take a more active role in the learning communities I have been exploring. This means that I will comment more, seek the advice of others there when I have a problem, and contribute my own expertise. I will definitely upload a lesson to my learning community before the end of the year!


The next time I try to improve my learning I will use the GAME plan strategy. I have found that it is a helpful way to remember the importance of not just making a goal, but also, planning the steps to take to achieve that goal. I often make goals but do not follow through because I don’t revisit and evaluate them. Without those critical steps I often fail. The GAME plan has been a successful learning approach for me.


References

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