Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

The goal this week is to monitor my personal GAME plan, an important part of the GAME plan process.

First, I will reflect on how I am doing in the area of gathering my needed resources. My Walden classmates have been very helpful in providing me with additional resources besides the ones I have found on my own. Sharon provided me with several project based learning resources. These websites are helping me decide on one type of project based assessment and some of the resources included a rubric so that I can develop a midpoint checklist. Assessing my student’s project based technology task half way through will enable me to re-teach and or model any troubling areas in the lesson. In addition, my students will be able to adjust their project and determine what should be revised and what still needs to be completed.  Mr. Clark suggested that I remember to include parent information to increase my student’s learning since their parents play an important role, especially since my students are in third grade.

Second, I will reflect on if my plan needs modifying. The answer to this question is “yes!’ I began my plan thinking that I would use one formative and one summative type of assessment while incorporating technology. Now I want to just focus on using authentic technology assessments such as a project based learning assessment.  I am finding that using assessments from the programs that I use in my classroom already have built in summative assessments, so I it will not be necessary to add more of these type of assessments in my classroom.

Third, I will summarize what knowledge I have gained thus far. I have inquired a lot of additional information on types of assessments and ways to incorporate technology with each type. In addition, I have found the need to focus on developing one type of authentic project based assessment. To make this assessment meaningful, I found the need to plan a midpoint assessment. I found benefits in including this, and by incorporating a midpoint assessment I will reach my goal of better managing my student’s learning in a technology environment.

Lastly, I have a few new questions to add to my GAME plan. What are some easy to manage midpoint checklist assessments in a project based assessment? What weight will the midpoint check assessment have in the total grading of the project? How do other elementary teachers monitor their student’s learning in a technology environment?  

As the authors of our course text pointed out, Assessment is more than the assigning of grades and serves a critical role in monitoring and evaluating the academic progress of students (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010).  The key to my GAME plan is to now choose an authentic project based assessment that incorporates technology in a meaningful way, while at the same time providing me with a way to evaluate my student’s progress towards reaching curriculum objectives.

 

References

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

Carry Out My GAME Plan

To be successful in Carrying Out my GAME plan I will need to gather some resources.

First, I will develop a teacher survey for the teachers in my district who teach 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade. I will design survey questions that ask educators how they manage their student’s learning in a technology-enhanced environment and how they use multiple methods of evaluation in their classrooms. I will use the information from the survey to create a PLC email group. This way I can collaborate with colleagues from my district, while trying to carry out my GAME plan.

Next, I will research and read some information about multiple methods of evaluation. I will look for one technology project based assessment that proved to increase student learning. Once found, I will tweak it to fit my third grade class. In addition, I will learn how to use our districts already approved benchmark testing program, and explore learning activities and instruction to increase student achievement on this district approved assessment.  I will collaborate with the other teachers in my building throughout this process.

Some additional information I may need is using my judgment on the correct balance of technology assessments to use with the third graders in my classroom. I am not sure there is any magic number, or combination of the correct amount of multiple methods of evaluation in a research article. I feel this will be something that my teacher instincts will have to guide. I will include student feedback into my decisions.

The steps that I have taken thus far are as follows. First, I have analyzed the data from our technology based benchmark testing program. I noted a weakness in comprehending informational text. I designed a lesson to teach strategies to strength comprehending informational text. I created a technology based assessment for my students to complete. This lesson served as a two-fold activity. My students are gaining knowledge on comprehending informational text while learning how to become better at taking tests on the laptops using the same benchmarking format.

As I journey through my GAME plan, I am open to any advice or ideas you can provide me. I feel this GAME plan will enable my students to score higher on our benchmark technology tests. In addition using technology will motivate my students to learn and become engaged in using technology in my classroom.

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