My Personal Game Plan

For a graduate class that I am currently taking at Walden University, I was asked to post a blog developing a GAME plan for strengthening my confidence in at least two indicators in the NETS-T (National Education Standards for Teacher. "GAME" is an acronym used in identifying content standards. The "G" stands for the setting of goals, the "A" represents taking action, the "M" is for monitoring, and the "E" represents evaluation and extension. Teachers use the NETS-T performance indicators to help "design, implement, and assess learning experiences to engage students and improve learning; enrich professional practice; and provide positive models for students, colleagues and the community" (ISTE, 2008). The course I am taking is focused on integrating technology into the classroom for use. "While technology is not essential to creating authentic, learner-centered instruction, it offers a powerful resource for engaging students in authentic experiences, typically increasing both their motivation and their learning" (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009, p.51).

The ISTE lists five standards with four performance indicators for each standard. The five standards are: facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, model digital age work and learning, promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility and engage in professional growth and leadership.
With each standard is a list of four performance indicators that help to define the role of the teacher.

The standards I feel most comfortable with are; facilitating and inspiring learning and creativity, designing and developing digital-age learning experiences and assessments and modeling of digital-age work and learning. I have often encouraged my students to use innovative thinking and creativity in my English class. When designing lesson plans and activities I try to incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning. Many extra credit assignments require the use of computers for researching authors, vocabulary or history that relate to what my students are learning. In addition to classwork, I also use digital tools to communicate with parents and other teachers. When researching background information I often use a search engine to obtain new and interesting facts about stories and authors that my class will read.

Two standards in which I could use strengthening are; promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility and the engagement in professional growth and leadership. Although I do spend a lot of time teaching my students about plagiarism, I probably do not spend enough time having students cite sources for non-researched papers. Another problem within our district is the lack of technology. Equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources is sometimes impossible in a district that has limited technology. Due to the lack of technology my classes are also limited to global learning through the creative application of technology in the classroom.

In order to strengthen my confidence and proficiency in the promotion and modeling of digital citizenship my plan is to advocate, model and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information to my students with the help of our librarian. Students will respect copyrights and intellectual property by citing sources every time they are used. In order to achieve this goal, I will take more time to teach citations and plagiarism with the help of the school librarian and by using activities that require students to cite others work. Progress of students will be monitored by giving assignments that require students to exhibit safe and ethical use of digital information. Learning will be extended and evaluated by slowly building the length and depth of the assignments which will require students to model safe and legal use of digital information by giving proper credit to another intellectual property by documenting sources.

Professional growth and leadership is another area in which I need more focus. Since I am a new teacher I have spent most of my time just trying to get through each day. Now after a year of teaching, I am slowly gaining more time to exhibit leadership in my school and professional community. A goal of mine is to convince our superintendent and Principal that more technology is needed within our high school building. In my last graduate course I conducted research on why some teachers don't use technology and had teachers take a survey regarding technology and why or why not they may or may not use it in the classroom. The information I found and received I plan on sharing with our administration to help convince them that better technology within our building can help to motivate our students to learn. Although I am not sure how to monitor my progress, I am hoping that my progress will result in more technological opportunities for my students. I will evaluate and extend learning by continuing to research how technology can motivate and help students to learn.

References:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use, A standards-based approach. Ohio: Cengage Learning

ISTE (2008). www.iste.org