Thursday, July 8, 2010

GAME Plan

GAME Plan

Goals-

After reading through the NETS-T performance indicators for teachers, there were two that would really help me effectively utilize technology in the classroom. The first is 2d: provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching. My assessments are always a one size fits all type of assignment. I would like to challenge myself to offer more variety in my assessment so that my students all have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge.

The second area I would like to challenge myself in is 4c: promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information. I feel that if I am going to ask my students to publish their ideas on a blog, that I must also teach them how to respectfully and appropriately comment on each other’s work.

Actions

In order to achieve these goals, I need to make modifications to my lesson designs. To meet my first goal, I will need to take a look at each of my major assessments and create some alternative assignments that will allow students to utilize technology. This will require some creative thinking on my part as many of my assessments are written tests or essays.

To achieve my second goal, I will need to purposefully integrate a lesson on net etiquette. I must make sure that my students understand the expectations surrounding a blog or wiki project. This lesson would be an additional one during the introduction of the blog or wiki project.

Monitor

To see if my GAME plan is working, I will need to constantly monitor how my changes are affecting my students. If I create a variety of assessment options and students are not taking advantage of them, I will ask students to find out if the assignments are a good equivalent. Students may be able to give me some feedback about the assessments I have created or even give me their own ideas. By being open to ideas from my students I get the most variety and interesting assignments.

Concerning my second goal, I will monitor their conversations on the blogs to see if they are adhering to the expectations I gave them. Because I can see everything that the students are posting, I will be able to monitor all the comments they make and remove any comments if necessary

Evaluate

Toward the end of the school year, I will be able to reflect upon the changes I have instituted. I can analyze how many students participated in alternative assessments and how many choose the traditional one. This will give me some idea as to whether to create new assignments or keep the ones I created. Depending on my findings, I would share these new assignments with my colleagues and see if they have any suggestions for possible assessments.

To see how successful my second goal was, I could poll my students at the end of the year and get their opinions about whether everyone followed the guidelines or not. Assuming the process was successful, I could share my lesson plans with other teachers at my school or post them to an online teaching community. I could explain the need for internet etiquette and then provide my lesson as an example of how to introduce the topic to students.

References

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.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating Technology Across the

Content Areas. Baltimore: Author.

National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf.

2 comments:

  1. Hello, Mr. D!

    I, too, wish to offer more opportunities for students to show their progress and achievement. I've begun experimenting with a project menu in which I list a set of criteria that must be met followed by several project options. I also allow for students to come up with their own project as long as it meets the critera and is okayed by me in advance.

    This has worked very well, but I'd like to extend it to weekly work rather than just unit-end assessments so that it can be more formative in nature rather than summative.

    I'd love to hear how this turns out for you in the hopes that I can take some of your ideas and try them in my own classroom!

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  2. Matt,
    These are great goals. As you are working on your second goal, modeling digital etiquette and responsible social interactions", you may want to reference Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009). In chapter seven, they discuss strategies for creating an "invitational online environment" (p. 167) where students can engage in open communication and risk-taking. They discuss elements such as teacher modeling, lessons on quality responses, and reflection.
    Kris

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