At the beginning of this course, I created a GAME plan to achieve success in integrating at least two indicators of the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) into my professional life. A GAME plan is when you set goals, take action to try and meet the goals, monitor your progress, and evaluating where you have met the goals or not (Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P., 2009, p.3). My GAME plan that I developed throughout this course involved collaboration between me and my students, the parents, the community, and other professionals. Each week I reflected on my GAME plan, monitored, evaluated it, and made necessary changes. The two indicators I chose to integrate were: indicator 3b: collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation and indicator 5a: participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning (NETS-T Standards). After creating my GAME plan, I thought that the first chosen indicator would not be difficult to achieve, but maybe the second indicator would be the more challenging one. As I am now reflecting upon the last eight weeks, actually the first indicator seemed to be the more challenging in some ways.
For the first indicator, I chose to set up a blog on my already established teacher webpage through Blackboard. This is how I would incorporate communication using technology with my students, parents, and the community. Throughout the process though, I discovered that my students and parents (with the student’s login information) could access my webpage, but members of the community could not. So as a result, I created a new teacher webpage using Edublogs.com. By using this new website, everyone was able to gain access to my teacher webpage where I posted class information, my PowerPoint notes, details for assignments and projects, blogs, and a new wiki project we are beginning after the holiday break.
For the second indicator, I joined an online professional learning network through http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/. Although, this network might be a good learning opportunity for some educators, I found that professionally I did not grow much from joining this particular network. One last minute change that I did make to achieve this indicator was joining Twitter. I know, I know, I told myself I would never join Twitter. I am a technology mentor for my school district, and in one of our monthly meetings, we had to report one action we made that month to grow as a professional. I was shocked when my colleagues mentioned that had joined Twitter for professional reasons. However, I have discovered in the short amount of time that I have been active with it, I have “followed” some people who I believe I might be able to benefit from professionally.
One new learning and “ah hah” moment I had was no matter how much I planned, I always had to make changes. I thought my original teacher webpage would work for the first indicator. Then, I thought that I would benefit professionally from the original professional learning network I joined. However, to achieve success for both indicators, I had to make big changes throughout the process. I discovered the important part was that I realized I had to make those changes in order to be successful in the long run. After making those changes, I found it much easier to achieve my goals I had set in the beginning.
I have made several changes to my instructional methods in teaching my social studies classes. One change I made was integrating more digital storytelling into my repertoire. The students had a blast with them! Another change was regarding how I plan my lessons now. Use to I would think of how I think my students should learn the material, but now I am beginning to think more in a middle school-age position. As my principal says “we must teach how they learn, not how we learn”. Lastly, I look at problem-based learning in a whole new light. In the beginning I was confused by the concept, but now I understand more of what PBL is and how to integrate it into my curriculum using technology.
Overall, I strongly believe that the GAME plan, the PBL content-area unit plan, and the course overall helped me to grow as a professional. I can honestly say that because of this course I feel that I have begun to make my transition from novice to master (well, kind of) teacher :).
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.
National Education Technology Standards for Teachers: http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx
Technology Integration in Education network: http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/
