Monitoring Your GAME Plan Progress

“Once the goals have been set for a GAME plan it is important to research the necessary resources you will need to be successful in filling out your goals (Cennamo, Ross, Ertmer, 2009).”  Now that I have researched the resources and began to try the implementation of it I am finding out that there is more to this than I originally thought.  When I started this GAME plan I thought I would be able to implement this without much problem at all.  As many of you stated I have switched to starting with a much smaller group for the original colleague wiki.  I am going to need to rely heavily on their support.  We decided to try and start this in January or February.  Right now everyone is busy with the start of the school year and we wanted to start at a time when we think we would have the most success.  Once we see how it works than we can try to spread it to the rest of the staff.

As far as starting a blog with my students I found out that I have a few hurdles that will have to be jumped over first.  While talking to the technology teacher she informed me that I would have to get permission with people at the district level.  Then we would have to get parent permission for their student to participate.  I would have to show the district that this would be an educational blog that would be beneficial for the students.  The nice thing I found out was that if we got all of this lined up then a technology person at the district level would help in setting up the blog.  I thought this was a nice.  So I still have a long way to go.  I understand the district wants to cover all our tails in this day and age of legal issues.

Reference

Cennamo,K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningfulclassroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Customed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Carrying Out My GAME Plan

As I began to try and implement my GAME plan I realized that this is going to take a little bit of work to get it in place.  In order for this to work the number one thing I am going to need to do is to collaborate with my colleagues.  I have sent an email to all the staff at my school to be able to gage the mood of the staff regarding the need or want of a blog or collaborative wiki.  Some of the staff said they would do it but have no experience with either of these. I was actually amazed at the number of staff who said they would not like another thing that they need to keep up with.  We are a very high achieving school and have lots of expectations and they felt that if there was something like this than it would add to the work load.  I have talked to our technology teacher and a friend that does technology at the district level.  They both said that they would help me if they could in implementing this.  They warned me that the number one thing I need to do is to make sure the staff is on board.  I do not want to take the time to set this up if no one is even going to try and make it work.  I know that if I can sell it to them as a collaborative tool that we could all use to help each other out and not make their work load heavier I think they would really benefit.  Does anyone do a wiki or blog for their school?  If so what can be done to make this a beneficial task for all involved?

GAME Plan

As a physical education teacher I have not spent much time with technology standards.  In previous courses I have skimmed over them but never really broke down what they actually meant to me.  I figured out that some of these indicators I already do without much trouble but there are plenty of them that I could improve upon.  The two for me I posted below.

1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

d. model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.

5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

b. exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others

Goals-My goal is to become better at using technology on a daily basis.  I would like to be able to use technology on a weekly basis to collaborate with my colleagues and students.  I would like to become a leader with technology so that I can share ideas with the people in my building.

Action-“That is, when used as a support and resource for the communicative processes of teaching and learning, the computer can be used to increase creative  thinking processes among groups and communities(Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p.70).”  I want to set up a couple blogs or wikis that I could use with my colleagues to communicate with.  The other I would like my students to be able to access to answer question that I post.  We do a good job as a faculty of using email but I think we could really get more done with the use of these other options.  I am interested to see if anyone has any information to make this transition easier. 

Monitor-I will monitor the progress by watching the traffic on the blogs.  We will see how many people are using the blogs to communicate with each other.  I can make my students use it by assigning homework to be down by answering on the blog.

Evaluate-If the students are using the blogs to communicate with me I will be able to mark it down in the grade book.  I would like to have a hundred percent participation but know that this can be difficult with some students not having internet access.  What can be done with these students?  It’s a little harder to make the staff use this but would hope that if we make it worth their while that they would want to participate.  That is where the burden falls on my shoulders with the help of some of the other technology savvy teachers. 

I still have a long way to go before I am anywhere near savvy with technology.  Every day through this class I become a little better and hope that with some insightful thoughts from my peers that I can continue to grow.  I am looking forward to your critiques and hope that I can also help you out as well.

Reference     

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.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved on September 13, 2011 from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx.