Developing My Personal GAME Plan

In the National Education Standards for Teachers, I have chosen to strengthen my confidence and proficiency for seamless technology integration into my content area. One standard is to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments and the second is to engage in professional growth and leadership. For me and my style of learning, I tend to learn by doing, but am not always one to pick up a concept and run with it. I like to find examples, and I like to adapt what I find to fit my schema. I have never been an innovator, but then again, most aren’t. So I will set a few goals and take action, monitor my progress, and evaluate what develops. I find both goals enriching because they provide me with the opportunity to teach, which in turn reinforces my confidence and proficiency.

First to address proficiency for integration in my classroom, I will design (actually adapt) a project that students should be familiar with. MySpace and Facebook are both popular social network sites that students recognize immediately. I plan to have students create a mock MySpace that will have them cover a particular year in history in a particular country. I will create categories for their space, provide the students with a daily assessment sheet, give them examples of websites for research, and then provide them with the rubric to evaluate their project. Once the project is in progress, adjustments can be made and the end result will provide the feedback for future production. The project can be done entirely online and we can link the pages of the student project to our class site for view by the public.

The second goal to establish would be for me to engage in professional growth and leadership by leading a Social Studies department meeting with the agenda to provide three activities to integrate technology in a manner that works to diffuse the pressure of the technology itself. I would find the three activities that could easily be integrated by any of our department members to their content material. By introducing the small staff to the activities, we would have the time to work closely together and because there would only be five members and myself, the level of stress would be easily eliminated. I would teach them how to create and edit a slide presentation such as Animoto (or any of the many that are being promoted) to have their students research, select pictures, and add music and text for impact. The presentation would be hands on, using photos and music from their content area. Another activity to teach would be one that I just completed, a Glog, from Glogster. This is a very unique project that permits students to research a few categories, then embed text, add graphics, photos, videos and hyperlink websites. Surprisingly it is a very simple venue to create what I would describe as an online bulletin board. Lastly, I would show them examples of the aforementioned project that I would label as a MySpace or Facebook. By teaching the students how to generate the page, I would be prepared to show any adjustments that I would have to make, or what I liked and disliked about the project. To monitor and evaluate my goal I could ask that my colleagues pick a topic for the next staff meeting and try to select one of the activities to implement. If I am successful, they should be able to return with at least one activity to do. If I need to adjust, they will return to the next meeting with questions or complaints, but would probably see or email me before that deadline.

Both of these goals meet at least two indicators. Under indicator 2 a., design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity and under indicator 5 b, I would exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others. There are a few other indicators that would fit the plan as well but the previous seem to fit best.