Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

My GAME plan is developed and now that I am working through it, I need to monitor my plan and progress by answering several questions. So, how am I doing?

Am I finding the information and resources I need?
Fortunately, none of the resources or information I need to fulfill my plan successfully are difficult for me to acquire or access. I have the technology tools available that I need and great resources from both the internet and colleagues.

Do I need to modify my action plan?
I am realizing that to teach my students to be good digital citizens I need to teach them more than just citing the resources they are using. That will become a habit for them as long as I continue to remind and require them to do it and provide suggestions and tools to make it efficient for them. The larger issue is that some of my students struggle with making the information their own. I think I need to teach some mini lessons on note taking; providing modeling and introducing graphic organizers to help them organize the information as they find it. Citing sources is imperative to being a good digital citizen, but so is putting the information into their own words.

What have I learned so far?
This week’s new learning centers around digital storytelling. I have reviewed some examples created by colleagues and students and I plan to take an online tutorial tomorrow to begin creating my own. I have been photographing my students at work and plan to create a digital story to be shared at an upcoming Family Night in my classroom. I am hoping my first digital story can be used as an example to introduce this tool to my students. I will evaluate the tutorial after I participate to see if this technology resource will be an effective learning tool for my students (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009).

What new questions have arisen?
I have learned that there are images and sounds that are available to be used openly and others that are copyrighted. In the spirit of being a good digital citizen I want to learn more about how to identify the ones that are available to be used openly. If I can identify some sources these would be perfect for my students to use as a library to enhance their products.

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Carrying Out My GAME Plan

Now that I have developed my GAME plan for teaching my students to be better digital citizens and to increase my use of technology tools in learning activities I need to identify the resources and additional information I need to make my GAME plan a reality (ISTE, 2008). Additionally, I need to assess my progress in my newly created GAME plan.

Resources: The resources I will need to carry out my plan include creating the pre and post assessments on concepts related to digital citizenship like citing sources and plagiarism. The data from the pre-assessment will guide my mini lessons to develop these skills. I plan to bookmark my division’s Appropriate Use Policy and the Code of Behavior so students can review this information from the primary sources. I plan to introduce students to
http://citationmachine.net/ and show them how to use this tool to cite sources using the division’s adopted format; MLA. The main resources I will use to incorporate technology tools into my lessons are the curriculum, my lesson plans, and my school’s technology resource teacher. Using backwards design, I will identify what I want students to be able to do and then I will select tools with suggestions from the technology resource teacher to support that.

I would like to become more proficient in several of the technology tools including web page design and digital storytelling. I will start by using tutorial programs and then seek additional clarification from the technology resource teacher at my school. I have found several possible tutorials I plan to try. If they are effective, they may be possible resources for my students as well. As Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2009) explain, “You can actually use technology to learn more about technology” (p. 10).

http://www.tech4learning.com/webblender/training

http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/classrooms/Classroom_Presentations_and_Lesson_Plans.htm

Additional Information: To remain up to date about possible technology tools to incorporate and ways to incorporate them I will continue attending my school’s Professional Learning Network on Using Technology for Differentiation. I will search for Internet resources to incorporate into my lessons as well.

Current Progress: It has only been one week since I developed my GAME plan but I have made some progress. I not only added citations to a SmartBoard lesson I created but I pointed them out to my students and commented on ownership and the importance of citation.

I incorporated two technology tools into my lessons last week aside from the lesson on the SmartBoard. I used a podcast so students could hear content information on ocean currents as well as see the information written on paper. The first time students listened I encouraged them to just visualize the information and make pictures in their minds of what they were hearing. The second time, I encouraged students to follow along on their papers. This information was written at a higher grade level and the podcast provided appropriate scaffolding and extra support to my auditory learners. My students who need more processing time had the option of listening to the podcast additional times. I also used this as an opportunity to briefly show students how it was created.

I found a video clip from Discovery Streaming that provided background knowledge prior to a cooperative learning problem solving activity about building a bridge. This brief clip leveled the playing field for students who had not had a lot of prior experiences with structures and served as a review for my expert builder students.

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Classroom resources, presentation tips and lesson plans. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/classrooms/Classroom_Presentations_and_Lesson_Plans.htm

Landmarks son of citation machine. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://citationmachine.net

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

Webblender 2. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.tech4learning.com/webblender/training

GAME Plan

My GAME plan: This will be my guide to strengthening and gaining confidence in the areas I identified (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009).

Goal Setting: After reviewing the National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T) I identified two indicators that I would like to become more confident and proficient with.
Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments Indicator a: design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity

Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility Indicator a: advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources

I selected “indicator a” from Standard 2 because I like that my growth in this area will directly impact and improve student learning and I felt “indicator a” from Standard 4 was a necessary area of growth as I integrate more technology into my lessons and student learning activities.

Actions: As one of my goals is to design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity, I will first review the content objectives and determine ways I can modify and revise the lessons to integrate technology that will enhance student learning experiences (Laureate Education Inc., 2009). This will ensure that the content remains at the forefront of student learning. The lesson planning process will be crucial to meeting this goal. As suggested by Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer (2009) I will need to “explore the resources to determine what features align with instructional goals” (p. 105). I will determine how technology can best used to support the content objectives; as a tutor, a mindtool, or support for conversation (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). I will also examine whether there are product options for students to demonstrate, personalize, and share their learning.
My second goal is to advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources. To meet this goal I will need to teach by example, as I prepare learning resources for students I need to include appropriate citations. I also plan to use a combination of mini lessons on respecting ownership and citations with weaving these concepts through my lessons. I will integrate the use of graphic organizers into the research process. My hope is this will reduce the amount of direct resource copying my students do.

Monitoring my Progress: In order to monitor my progress for both of my goals, I will need to make my goals measurable. I plan to try to incorporate technology resources or tools into each of my oceanography lessons even if it is just providing non linguistic visuals to support learning. I also plan to track the number of different resources and tools I integrate to ensure that I use a variety. To monitor my goal of teaching my students ethical and respectful practices regarding technology and ownership, I plan to pre assess my students’ background knowledge on this subject and build mini lessons and lessons woven into the content study based on their needs identified in the pre assessment. I will incorporate citations and student wording into product rubrics to further encourage these practices in students and monitor how well my students are learning this.

Evaluating and Extending my Learning: I will evaluate how well I met my goals by reviewing my lesson plans and noting how often I integrated a technology tool or resource and how many different ways I used technology to enhance student learning. I will evaluate how well I modeled and taught my students to be responsible citizens concerning technology by administering a posttest to measure their growth (and mine) in this area compared to the pretest. To extend my learning and continue to develop my competency, confidence, and proficiency with these indicators I will engage in collaboration through this blog, discussion boards, and my school’s PLN on differentiation with technology. Additionally, as this class progresses I am sure I will learn about more technology resources and tools to support my development in these areas.

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach (Laureate Education custom edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Davis, V.

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