Final Reflection: Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas

As my 8th course at Walden comes to a close, I will take some time to reflect on my learning. This class, along with my classmates, has taught me how to appropriately and effectively integrate technology into the areas I teach.

Learning the GAME plan has been beneficial for me because it gave me a way to organize my goals and constantly evaluate the progress of them. This simple system for managing goals can be used by anyone and would be good to pass on to students. By using the GAME plan in this course, I learned how to connect with teachers in different countries and about different assessment strategies using technology. Having the GAME plan and this blog to record in, gave me the motivation to reach out and accomplish my goals. Having learned these new things with my first experience of using the GAME plan, it will definitely have a positive impact on my instructional practice. Now that I learned new ways to connect with other teachers, I will always have access to sharing information with them and learning from them. Learning about assessments has given me more options for assessing my students and their differentiated needs.

Adjustments I would make to my instructional practice regarding technology in the content areas would be to try and best match up technology with the purpose of my lessons and to provide as many options to students as possible for creating final products of their work. I think it's important to use technology appropriately and it is the teacher's responsibility to make effective decisions when deciding what type of technology to incorporate into lessons.

Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

Now that I have successfully used the GAME plan process, I feel that I can more effectively use it with my students. In order to help students meet the NETS-S standards, I could use the GAME plan to structure students' goals. One of my goals for the students would be to have them eventually implement this plan on their own. Once students are familiar with the steps, they will become custom to doing it on their own and applying it to different areas in their life. The NETS-T and NETS-S are very inter-related because because they both focus on similar core ideas, which include creativity, digital age learning (collaboration), information fluency and digital citizenship, engaging in growth and transfer of knowledge.

There are different ways that you can use the GAME plan with students. I think it is important to make sure students are aware of the process of learning. It's also important to remind students that if they didn't fully meet their goal, it is not necessarily a bad thing. They will just continue the cycle by evaluation and determining how they will modify their plan until they meet their goal. The GAME plan can be easily applied to almost any lesson. Every lesson we teach should have a goal. We are also always monitoring student learning and evaluating it. The key is to get students more involved in the process. We've learned about many different tools on the internet that can help students with accomplishing their goals and staying organized. For example, blogs are a wonderful tool for student reflection. Implementing the GAME plan will help students become more self-directed learners.

Revising My GAME Plan

When thinking about how I would revise my GAME plan, I realize that I have learned a lot that I can apply in my instructional practice. I've learned more about reaching out and connecting with other teachers. I got to try out some new things on the internet that I wouldn't have if not for this class.

I would still like to continue to work more towards the goals I have been reflecting on and some others as well. One of my goals for my GAME plan was to learn more about assessment with technology. I need to experiment more with different programs to use for assessment. I've gone as far as finding out some different options, but haven't has an opportunity to put them into action. One that I used for my unit lesson is http://www.proprofs.com. This is a free online tool for creating quizzes, polls, flashcards, games, blogs, and wiki's. I just used it for creating a quiz, but I liked how it gave the option of writing in an explanation for the correct or incorrect answers.

In reference to the NETS-T standards a new goal I would like to work on is finding ways to promote student thinking through reflection using online collaboration tools. I chose this as my next goal because reflection in learning is important and students should be aware of how technology can help them reflect on their work. Online collaboration tools also provide teachers with different ways to assess students.

Some ways that I can improve my learning for next time are to set aside a designated time to research information for my goals, take time to reflect more often, and continue to keep record of things that I find that I could use in the future.

Evaluating my GAME Plan

I am going to evaluate my GAME plan and the meeting of my selected goals by answering the following questions:

*How effective were your actions in helping you meet your goals?*
I feel that my actions were somewhat effective in meeting my goals. I was able to use my resources to begin to find the information I was looking for, but did not receive as much feedback as I had hoped for. I got a few responses from people, which created a deeper interest for me. I think that although I did reach out, I needed to reach out more. My classmates from Walden have been very helpful in their suggestions. I think I effectively tried new things. I had never had any motive or interest in wanting to use twitter. I didn't see the point in it, but now it seems as though it could be something very useful. I created an account and plan on using it just to follow educational posts. I also liked that there is a whole category named "technology." I found out some more information about assessment from my Walden classmates, which was helpful. I also was able to look into some online applications.

*What have you learned so far that you can apply in your instructional practice?*
I have learned that if you take the time to search for resources, there are usually several others who have similar interests. I thought that it would be hard to find ways to connect with teachers in different countries, but there are quite a few ways of doing so. I also learned that social networking sites and discussion boards are more useful than I had originally thought in communicating with other teachers. I'm really starting to see how professionals can use different internet tools to communicate effectively. I would like to start more discussions on discussion boards and possibly even create something of my own (a blog, wiki, or other type of web page) to invite other teachers to join and share ideas on different topics of interest.

*What do you still have to learn? What new questions have arisen?*
I still want to learn more specifics of what types of technologies are being used by teachers in different countries. I feel that a lot that I want to learn will come with experience and willingness to try new things.

*How will you adjust your plan to fit your current needs?*
I don't think I need to adjust my plan, as much as just continue it. I just need to continue reaching out and connecting with others.