GAME Plan Reflection

Looking back at the Game plan I developed at the start of this course, I'm certain that I am heading in the right direction in my classrooms.  Using my blogs to address two NETS standards was a good starting point.  Students will constantly need the reminder in my class about what is appropriate and what is not.  My hope is that eventually they will have a firm understanding of digital responsibility and citizenship.  The blogs were also a good way to facilitate student learning and creativity.  Students had great discussions ver their blogs about the novel we were reading in class.  They will be using the blogs after the novel to create a multi genre project on their blogs.

I realized that students will do work willingly, such as blogs, if a couple things are present.  First, like anything else, they want to see the relevance.  It is important the students know why they are working on the blogs.  I will spend a period prior to working on blogs discussing NETS-S and what the blogs will accomplish here.  Second, students love the interaction with their friends in a forum that they feel comfortable with and can take ownership of.  The more I can do to facilitate online interaction the better.

This course showed me new ways to use the technology.  My seniors will complete a digital storytelling lesson.  This lesson will be spread out over the final grading period.  There will be writing pieces built into the assignment that varies from research to script writing.  The digital videos will be posted on the blogs that they already keep.  I also want to continue working with the wikis.  They are a great way to collaborate and I want students to take advantage of this free tool.

Really, in reflecting over this course, I am most grateful for its practicality.  I chose this graduate program because I knew there were tools that I could use to improve student interest and student learning.  This class has been the most useful class in the course yet.  The workload was extremely high, however, the payoff was just as high.

GAMEs and NETS

The GAME plan is a great way of planning what I do in the class and evaluating its success.  In order to develop proficiency in the technology standards, I will need to continue to find ways to introduce technology and use the technology with different lessons.  Moving forward with the new GAME plan, I have to set my goal.  The goal I want to continue with from the NETS-S standards is communicating and collaborating.

The actions that I am going to take to meet this goal I am hoping will be multifarious.  I will be using the wikis with research.  I think these are a great way for students to collaborate with one another.  I am going to continue my work with blogs in the classroom, and I want to have students do more projects with the blogs as they become more comfortable using them.  Digital storytelling is another way for students to work together.  It also gives the students a different way to communicate what they have learned from a given project.

Wikis and blogs are pretty straightforward as far as monitoring.  I can constantly check student wikis and blogs to make sure they are keeping up with work and working well together.  The digital storytelling is alittle more complicated to keep track of.  I need to create a checklist of due dates for the project so that I can see each step of the process.  This is important because students could get caught up in the process of making the video and lose focus of the content that goes within the video.  By having the students on a schedule, I can make sure students do not get sidetracked and lose focus of what is important.

Evaluating student success will come from looking at blogs and wikis again.  I will be able to see the interaction that occurred on both sites.  Seeing the finished videos from the digital storytelling will be another great way to gauge students' success.  However, it will be important to have students evaluate how well they collaborated with each other.  Again, I do not want some students carrying the workload while others do nothing.

The GAME plan is a great way to plan out the incorporation of technology.  As many of us have found out, it is not easy to just jump right into new technology.  It was the same with me.  I needed a plan and now I have one.  I am looking forward to putting my new GAME plan into action.

This week...

This week I got some great tips for my GAME plan.  I will try to group my students in the next week.  These groups will help me to eliminate cliques that have begun to develop with the use of blogs.  I also got some great feedback on issues I was having with one of my students who swore on his blog.  This was always one of my goals: teaching students digital citizenship and responsibility.  We have a Terms of Acceptable Use policy for technology that I will go over with students.  Students need to understand that the blogs are an extension of the classroom and the same expectations apply on the blogs as they would in the class.  I think going over the policy will help.  However, having this happen i think was a good learning experience for him.  It opened up the discussion about businesses monitoring what is on social networking sites for not only hiring but firing employees.  This was also something that came up in the blogs this week from one of my classmates.  Overall, I think this week has led to some great progress in my GAME plan.

Revising and Building on the GAME Plan...

My first goal of inspiring and facilitating student learning and creativity is coming along great.  Students started using blogs tentatively.  However, as they gained more confidence they began taking more risks and posting pictures and music with their posts.  Also, as students respond to each other and see that their classmates read the blogs they have increasingly wrote with more thought.  I have been very pleased with the progress of the blog assignment.

Vicki Davis spoke about using blogs to help with differentiation.  This is definitely something I can incorporate into my instructional practice.  I love the idea of allowing my students to post videos if they sometimes struggle with the typing.  It is definitely something I will try with my students.

I am still working on helping my students with digital responsibility and citizenship.  Just this past Monday I had to have a talk with one of my seniors.  He swore in his weekly post.  Speaking with him, he agreed he would not have swore in class, and he realizes now that he should not have swore in his post as it was for this class.  However, he did state that he would have no problems with saying what he said on his Facebook account.  I know that this is the mindset of almost all my students and this is something that I need to keep working on with them.

A new goal that I can easily work toward is increasing student communication and collaboration.  The more communication between the students in the blogs, the better the blogs have been.  I need to devise a way to get students to respond to different classmates' blogs each week.  In this way, the blogs are a true extension of the classroom.  I want to eliminate cliques in the classroom, but sometimes that is very difficult to accomplish.  Any suggestions as to how I can get students to communicate with different people each week?

I think a new approach I can take for this is to ask for student feedback on how I can make the blogs even more effective.  They are at the point now where they have a comfort and familiarity where they can offer up suggestions as to how to better use theblogs in the classroom.  They can also give input on how to get students to communicate with different people each week.

Progress and Possible Adjustments Needed

My GAME plan is yielding results when looking at my two goals.  Students have become more interactive with their blogs and their classmates as they have grown more familiar with blogger.  I love seeing students incorporate pictures in their blogs.  Students have changed the backgrounds of their blogs to personalize them.  The blogs have become an extension of the classroom and they allow students to show their own creative side which was one of my goals.  I have also been able top have discussions through the blogs about what is appropriate to post in discussions, in pictures, and in their personal information sections of the blogs.  This ties in directly with my hope to help teach students digital responsibility.  Implementing the blogs as weekly assignments for the students has been vital to helping me meet these goals.

One of the biggest things that I have seen that I want to incorporate more is students' love of interaction with their classmates.  Students love getting responses to their posts.  As the blog assignments have progressed, the more students have gotten comments on posts, the more they write about in their posts.  They also have increased their own interaction as they get comments.  I want to pull this into the class with more collaboration and group work.  They enjoy interacting and feeling a connection with their classmates.

I am still working on different ways to work with the blogs.  I do not want the blogs to be limited to a form of online journal.  I would love for students to be able to submit projects or papers with their blogs.  I need to figure out how I can do this.  I also worry that the more students do major assignments on their blogs, the greater risk for plagiarism will occur.  My students use turnitin.com, so this can still be a deterrent.

The biggest problem has still been access to computers.  I still have around three to five students complain about not having access to blogs on computers and not having time to see me before school because they ride the bus.  These students are often late with their blog posts or get discouraged and do not post at all.  I am worried about how long it is taking administration to unlock the Web site.  I am wondering if I need to be available after school as well for students.  The issue is that I am also a coach and basketball will be starting soon which will make this impossible.  My plan still needs some minor adjustments.  Any ideas?

Monitoring the GAME Plan

As I continue taking steps meeting my goals for my personal GAME plan, I am getting access to the information and resources I need.  The biggest hurdle so far has been having unrestricted access for my students to computers and their Web cites that they need to access.  With time though, this will become less of an issue.

Reading and responding to my students' blogs has led me to modifications I do need to make to my plan.  At first, I thought monitoring digital citizenship and responsibility would be easy.  I also thought eventually I could back out of the picture.  This may happen for some students, but it is naive to think it will happen for all of them. I found it will take constant interaction with many of the students throughout the school year.  Students will need to know that what they put on the internet is out there for everyone.  Some of my students have stated things such as, "This book is boring and I fell asleep in class today."  This was a great talking point for us because I was able to talk about how employees have been fired for similar postings put on Facebook status updates.  It really surprises students and this shows me that teaching my students these concepts will take time and patience.

I have learned that students love having the opportunity to do different things with technology.  For example, the more my students were given time to explore their blogs, the more they enjoyed personalizing them.  Students put pictures and music on their blogs.  I also saw how much the students love to interact with each other.  They have actively discussed the novel we are reading in class right now because students have taken the time to respond to each others' posts.  They are also more willing to post on their blog once they see their classmates are reading and responding.  In the end it becomes cyclical in a very positive way.

As far as questions, I am simply exploring the blogs on my own in an attempt to see what other ways I can incorporate them into the class.  Now that students are actively involved with them, I want to take advantage of their interest.  I am excited about the possibilities.

Putting the Plan into Action

As I look back at my GAME plan, I'm noticing that already on my way with the use of classroom blogs.  As I further develop the use of the blogs with my students, I will be able to help them facilitate learning and creativity while also demonstrating and helping them learn digital citizenship and responsibility.

In order to continue carrying out this plan, I will need continuous access to computers.  I will need support from my administration and parents as we take the blogs and further develop them.  I would like students to get to the point where they are posting videos as well as posts on their pages.  I would also like their posts to be at times informal, but also have them post formal pieces of writing.

 I will need additional information as I continue to develop the use of blogs in my classroom.  When I get to the point where I have students upload videos on their blog (for example, i hope to have students film themselves acting out scenes of Julius Caesar) I will need to work with administration and parents again to find out what legal steps I need to take to make sure that we are covered.  I will also need to see where I can get cameras to use for the projects and also look into students using their cell phones as many have the video recording capabilities already.

Thus far, I have gotten a good start on the integration of this technology.  Setting up the blogs took some work with administration.  I had to get them approved and I am still waiting for the site to be unblocked school wide for student use.  At this point I have had to unlock computers for students whenever they wanted to access the site at school.  I also make myself available to students every morning 35 minutes before school starts so that they can use computers in my classroom.

It has been a good start, but I have much more that I can do with this and other technology in my classroom.  I know roadblocks will come up as they already have with the delay to unblocking the site.  The key will be remaining flexible and finding creative solutions to the problems.  So far, so good.

This week's post...

Coming up with a GAME plan this week didn't seem that difficult.  However, as I created it, everything seemed to be a little vague.  I was having difficulty coming up with concrete plans to see my goals through.  Megan shared a great site that deals with technology and multiple intelligences It will take a little time to sift through everything the site has to offer, but it does offer concrete options that will help.

National Education Standards for Teachers and Putting Them in Place Personally

My goals are to improve in inspiring and facilitating student learning and creativity, and I also want to be able to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility.  In order to achieve these goals I need to continue to come up with different types of technology to incorporate in the classroom that deal with different intelligences so students have opportunities to express themselves.  This will also allow me to help students use the technology in a responsible way so that they know what is acceptable and what is not.  Monitoring my progress will not be as easy.  I need to continually reflect after each unit and see what types of technology were included and what intelligences were addressed.  I then need to look critically at what I am doing to see if there is anything that could b added for the next time the unit comes up.  Monitoring the student digital citizenship and responsibility will be a little easier.  For example, with my student blogs and I can monitor what information they are posting and give them feedback.  As the year progresses students should need less feedback and will be able to monitor themselves.  Finally, I can evaluate my success at the end of the year through reflection once again.  How much technology have I introduced and incorporated in my classroom.  What else can I work with over summers to incorporate as well.  Also, I can look back at students digital responsibility and see how it progressed.  If there was a lack of progression I will know I need to spend more time focusing on that particular area the next time around.  This seems like a somewhat daunting task, but I have already taken the first step with student blogs and I'm seeing great results so I'm looking forward to pushing forward.

New class and new blog

I'm excited for this class.  I am now beginning to see results in my classroom from the courses I am taking at Walden.  I want to incorporate more technology in the classroom and this year all of my students are using blogs as an extension of our classroom.  They are using the blogs in a similar way that we use the blogs for this course.  Students have one post a week and must follow their classmates and respond to one entry a week.  So far students like the idea of the blogs.  They have had fun creating them and have commented how similar it feels to Facebook. I hope their enthusiasm continues throughout the year and I hope this class helps me improve my use of Blogs in the classroom.