Developing My Personal GAME Plan

Developing My GAME Plan: Integrating the National Educational Technology Standards and Performance Indicators into my classroom will enable me to reach a higher level of integration of technology in my classroom.

As I reviewed the NETS-T, the indicators in which I feel most comfortable with are:

1. Technology Operations and Concepts: I am extremely confident in this area. I am somewhat known as the “tech guru” in my building. I possess the type of thinking ability that enables me to learn and or figure out almost anything new in technology. I “love” learning about a new technology and will walk into my classroom and try it out without any fear of failure. I learn along the way.
 
3. Teaching, Learning, and the Curriculum: I am involved in writing the technology curriculum; this committee helps me to understand the curriculum. This knowledge results in my ability to incorporate technology to support higher order skills and creativity and learner-centered strategies.
 
5. Social, Ethical, Legal, and Human Issues: I teach third grade and our district technologies guidelines and policies, combined with common sense are pretty clear. Each new school year I familiarize myself with any changes to the policy, so that I have a clear understanding how to promote a safe and healthy use of technology resources. My school does not have a huge array of diverse backgrounds, however if this ever changed I would update my technology resources to empower those learners.

The areas that I will focus on are:

2. Planning and Designing Learning environments and Experiences: This indicator is not exactly my weakness, but an area I could focus on is part E., managing my student’s learning in a technology-enhanced environment.

4. Assessment and Evaluation: Although I understand this indicator, I only use the district approved technology assessments to evaluate my students. I know I could bring my assessments to a higher level if I researched and incorporated more of a variety of technology assessment techniques. I am decent at using data to drive my assessment, but my assessments are not made up of multiple methods of evaluation.

Reflecting on these areas will guide my GAME plan.

G- Goals – My goal is to familiarize myself with the variety of technology assessments available to me and research how other teachers use these assessments to drive their instruction. I also want to figure out the right balance of multiple methods of evaluation so that I am not constantly assessing my students in a summative way, but also incorporating more of a formative way involving my students in using my feedback to monitor their learning in my classroom. While I use technology assessments, I will manage my student’s learning environment in an assessment type of way. I will focus on researching and using midpoint formative assessment when incorporating my technology projects. I will use the data from summative technology assessments to drive my instruction.

A-Actions- I will incorporate and experiment in using a combination of technology type of assessments in addition to some of the basic ones I already use. I will collaborate with other teachers in and out of Walden to see what type of technology based assessments increased student learning. I am also looking to research how technology could be used as a re-teaching tool based on assessment data.

M- Monitor – I will review my research about technology assessments and decide on incorporating two new technology assessments in my classroom. I will make the goal of using one formative and one summative assessment. I will collaborate with my colleagues and my classmates once I have used the assessments. In addition, I will ask for student feedback in the form of a survey. I will look at how technology assessments’ increased the level of learning and active engagement in my classroom. I will also monitor my ability to understand how my students’ learn best and judge if the technology assessment is adding to their learning so I can incorporate more positive technology experiences in my classroom.

E-Evaluate – I will evaluate and extend my learning through reflection by keeping a journal when my students are engaged in their technology assessments. This will help me to monitor and adjust my decisions about the type of technology assessments I will choose. I will also use the survey my students filled out and read their feedback to confirm or change my assessments and or teaching practices. I have the technology knowledge necessary to incorporate technology and use multiple technology assessments in my third grade classroom. There are a vast number of digital tools that support digital learning such as computer-based tutorials, wikis, and web-based programs that can help me analyze and evaluate my student’s learning as Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer pointed out (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). I am comfortable at so many levels of the NETS-T indicators that this plan will be beneficial to increasing my students’ learning by modifying my technology activities in my classroom.

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.

http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2 Retrieved from: http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers