Revising My GAME Plan

Since first instituting what I thought was a sound GAME plan for me to follow as a professional, I have found that each week I have made only slight adjustments. Mostly timing or planning a lesson, trying to integrate the technology or finding it doesn’t quit match the content material, and trying to keep a pace that seems to be getting away from me. I am frustrated by the timing of my course material with my classroom activities and having to help a student teacher right now all coupled with coaching Track and Field. It really has put me in the corner. So I am trying to pare down the adjustments and step back a bit and try to analyze what I have accomplished up to this point. I spent the entire Easter Sunday at my computer and I will never do that again. It should have been a day spent with my family, yet I was buried because of prior commitments and assignments. It had a negative effect on my personality and the kids made comment after comment on Monday that I looked tired or asked if I was OK. Obviously, I took on more than I should have, so rather than trying to tweak what I have so far, I am going to push forward and make sure I have what I want to teach the students, when I get to that content material. I have assembled the Czars of Russia for them to include on their faux MySpace, I have located and compiled different products for them to advertise; collected several websites so their research is streamlined, and have developed a model, rubric, and daily assignment checklists to keep them moving in a timely fashion. I just am not sure what more I can do in order to make this lesson seamless. Sometimes you just have to see what happens. Like coaching football, a play that is well executed on paper looks like a game winner, call it on the field against the wrong defense and it could cost you the game. That’s why practice is so important. When I spent a couple of hours going through it myself, I found it worked just fine and I was able to find everything prompted on the rubric, but I’m not a student with that content material so I may find a problem does exist.

It is my goal to make sure I reach the NETS- T standard 1 where I facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity. By having them develop a mock MySpace, it permits them to design the layout, create graphics, and allow their creative energy to shine. It is an individual project with approximately 40 items to display on a single page; therefore it is somewhat of a challenge and will reveal what they may see as important and what they didn’t prioritize. It will also promote, reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes. The project also permits me to model and facilitate effective use of current and new digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. There are other goals to set for myself as I plug along. I think that by conducting a small scale workshop for a handful of my peers I exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology integration, and help reach goals by developing the leadership and technology skills of others. I just have to be careful on how much I put on my plate so it is more manageable.