Evaluating My GAME Plan Progress

My actions so far to meet my goals have not been very effective. On paper my actions to achieve my goals seem that they were direct and easy to carry out. I continue to find that I need time to achieve my goals.

What I have learned so far is that if I plan to effectively carry out my GAME plan I need to put in the work to achieve my goals. Just like my students, I am learning new things and have felt overwhelmed. This feeling will allow me to relate to the students when they are feeling overwhelmed with the work that they are doing and we can discuss how we can overcome this feeling and accomplish our goals.

There are still many things that I need to learn before I can fully feel comfortable integrating the technology into lessons and creating projects for the students. A couple of these things include, when is the right time to allow the students to use technology and is there ever to much technology that will take the students away from being to make calculations without technology? As a teacher to other teacher question that I would ask is how have these teachers found the time to create great lessons that involve technology?

My adjustment to my plan will be to simple keep plugging away and trying to achieve my goals with the new realization that it will not happen overnight. This is something that I cannot give up on but to keep working on till I meet my goals no matter how long it takes and hope that it will come together soon then later.

Rick Orr

Monitoring my GAME Plan

The progress I have made is little, but I am working on it. One piece of information that I did manage to find was that my school has a program already that will allow me to create a blog, post homework on a calendar, and link any information that would help my students. Once I have the site constructed to the way I would like, it will be liked to my name on the school website. First thing that I need to work on is navigating around the page. I have made some changes to the generic page that everyone has but I am still working on it. I have also started to write down how much I am using a computer in my different classes and how much the students are using the computer.

The biggest thing that I have learned so far and something that I will need to modify is that it takes time to be able to set up and establish new lessons that include technology. I find myself deciding to go with more conventional methods because they are already made, even though I am trying to make changes. I need to approach this process as I do other things in my life, I need to set time aside to research, develop, and work on new approaches for my class like I do for my extracurricular activities.

The biggest question I have is, do I want to start implementing these new ideas now or wait and take in as much as I can and then start working on the integration? I am leaning on still looking for new ideas, trying small things in my class but waiting till I have a better understanding to put it all together. Many of the things that I have learned have been over the last year as I am taking class, so it has dawned on me that I have confidence in knowing the material that I am teaching but lack in creative methods to portray information to the students.

Carrying Out the Game Plan

To carry out my game plan there is some actions that need to be taken to achieve my goals. One of the resources that I will need is the Internet. Through the Internet I will be able to research and read how others are using technology in their classroom. This will also supply me with a way to communicate with these teachers so that I can get details to how they use the technology. The Internet will also supply lesson plans that have already been created and can be manipulated to the needs of the students and the use of technology. Another resource will be workshops on technology use in the classroom. I can take the information that is learned at these workshops and create lessons that will integrate technology into them. Are there any resources that others have found that will be helpful to me?

Additional information that I will need will include websites that are already created to help teachers with the use of technology in their classroom, instructions and lessons on how to use technology that I do not know how to use, and reactions from other teacher who have already try the methods that I choose.

The only step that I have taken to achieve my goals and take action is to take my master courses. Many of the ideas that I have need to be written out as lesson plans and attempted before they are assigned to the students. The use of technology in the classroom is a new adventure to me over the last year. There are many good things that I have learned but have not implemented them yet, I need to set time aside to create lessons that use technology and not rely on what I have dine in the past. I know that we are working on confidence but are others struggling to implement technology right away as we are learning new strategies?

Rick Orr

My GAME Plan for Using Technology in the Classroom and Beyond

After examining the National Education Standards for Teachers, these are located at http://www.iste.org/, there were two indicators that caught my eye and seemed to be good starting points to help me incorporate technology more often in my teaching. The first goal would to incorporate digit tools into my teaching to enhance the learning experience of the students. The second was to communicate information to the students in others ways instead of just telling them.
The action that I would take to accomplish the first goal is to use some of the methods that were discussed in class and apply them to my teaching. Another way I could take action for my first goal is to research into teachers who are using different digital tools in their classroom and communicate with them about what they are doing and how they are doing it. This will also help me with my second goal. Once I have the input from different teachers or from articles, apply what I have learned to my own classes. The actions that I would take to accomplish my second goal are to first set up a blog for each of my classes and communicate to the students and to the parents the link to my blog. The blog would be updated daily with assignments and the lectures from that day’s class.
To monitor my goals, I would create a list of questions to be filled out weekly on the amount of technology that I used in class that week and how I used the technology in class. To monitor my blog, as I make the daily updates, I can check and see how many people are looking at the site and communicate with them.
The evaluation process for the first goal can be achieved by the assessments that are given to the students after they have finished a lesson. To evaluate my communication, as I am communicating to the people that have looked at the site I can ask them for suggest and their feeling on the blog and how it is set up.
Are there any suggestions on how this GAME plan can be modified to be more productive for both the students and the teacher?
Are there any more ideas or methods that I can use to help myself obtain my goals and then set new ones?

Rick Orr