Looking Back - Going Forward

It has been an experience, this journey into the land of the GAME plan. Skeptical, reluctant, and hesitant are adjectives I would use to describe my “self” attitude at the start. I had thought my teaching style, conferencing – contracting was quite sufficient in teaching my students. At best, using technology was an add on, something extra, a tool to use to accomplish what I as teacher had chosen for the students to learn. In short, I had not allowed technology to be much more than an expensive pencil to copy down what I determined was to be learned. In retrospect, I sometimes think my students were modern day equivalents of children copying lessons with chalk and slateboard. Perhaps that is a bit dramatic and overly exaggerated but compared to what I now know to be available as classroom tools, the sentiment expressed might well be true.

I will be the first to admit that I was not able to at first catch the vision and develop my own “GAME” plan till later in the course. However I did learn a few lessons along the way.

From Lesson one I learned, that students engaged under the directions of their own efforts will retain this lesson far better than the teacher directed experience. Lesson Two reaffirmed lesson one in that I the teacher had been making the decision for my students in what I wanted them to learn, the journey belonged to me. Lesson two suggested that I allow students to work collaboratively to make the journey theirs. It was here that I have my first revision of the Game plan. My Goal became to make the journey theirs, the action plan became a search to find activities to reach the goals, monitoring began to give way to thinking of how to make sure the first two steps occurred and I realized that as this was new territory I would have to evaluate to in order to make continued adjustments. I also began to realize that my fellow companions on the journey, my students, were part of the cooking crew and we all stirred the pot. Lessons Three and Four continued to show me that I did not know enough and frankly I was getting despondent until I reread the advice from our text, that using technology was a work in progress and I should go with what I know, (Cennamo and Ertmer ). It was in these lessons that I determined not to let my students become, “digitally illiterate” (Jacobs, page 135, 2010). Lesson Six provided video examples of collaborative work and by lesson Seven, I began to say, “yeah, I could do that, that is a wonderful Idea. I so much enjoyed the examples and suggestions of Dr. Abrams and Tim Best, (Laureate Education, Inc. 2008) that my GAME plan began to come to life.

At the end of this course I knew I would be considering putting what I learned into practice. I chose NETS-T standard 1a, “ promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness “ and 2a, “design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity”. In setting up for my GAME plan I chose these standards because I felt were they were achievable this year, afforded a foundation upon which to build and would allow for change within a relatively short period of time. Already I have been busy with the action part of the GAME plan.

Last Thursday our first of 9 scheduled webinars began on using technology in the classroom. These will be occur every 3 Thursday of the month. We already have a Brain Pop site license, the staff and I will be attending their monthly webinars as well. In the first week of school, my students instead of writing the traditional paper to introduce themselves they will be using media to do so. I have noted in my overview of unit plans in the margins, “use media” Power point, or “have class collaborate / wiki here.” Borrowing a suggestion from one of my colleagues from the class, I am planning on having my math students make a series of how to instructional videos for those students in my wife’s lower grade classroom. Basically, I have noticed a change in using technology from drill and practice the information to using to share and find the information. As Ertmer said, this will lead to other things. As I look back I see that my attitude and willingness to utilize technology has changed. With that willingness, I still confess my status as a novice I know the GAME plan will be changing, many times, but I am looking forward to learning new paths, seeing new things with the students I travel with.



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.



Jacobs, H.H, (2010) Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. (ASCD) Alexandria, VA



Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008b). Program Twelve. Spotlight on Technology: Digital Storytelling, Part Two [Motion picture]. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore: Author.