Developing a Personal GAME plan…

The GAME plan is a series of four main stages that are recommended for self directed learning, each letter in the word represents a different stage in the process:

1.     Setting Goals,

2.     Taking Action to meet goals,

3.     Monitor progress toward achieving goals, and

4.     Evaluate whether the goals were achieved and Extend your learning to new situations.

For this assignment, I have studied the National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) and have selected two indicators that I feel that I could improve in my own teaching performance. Using these two indicators I have set out a GAME plan for how I will make and implement these improvements.

The two NET indicators that I have chosen are to:

•             Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity by promoting student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes
•       Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility by advocating, modeling and teaching safe, legal and ethical use of digital information and technology

I teach a practical subject where students are presented with a design problem that they need to solve by following key steps in a set design process. When students start a project, they begin by analyzing the problem and then need to actively research answers to any questions raised from the analysis. Once this research is completed, they need to synthesis their findings so that they can use this to inform their design decisions. Currently I find that my students are less than motivated when it comes to synthesizing and summarizing their findings from the research and as such this has negative consequences when they start to design because their designs do not consider all aspects of the problem. I feel that by facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity to promote student reflection I will be able to better prepare my students for the design stage of the design process.

The reason that I have chosen to set the promotion and modeling of digital citizenship and responsibility as another area that I need to focus on my teaching is because I realize that I have some weaknesses in this area and in the past have not expected my students to cite their sources to respect copyright and intellectual property rights.

The GAME plan that I have set out to help me improve in these two areas are defined below:

GOALS

I want to be able to give my students the skills to reflect on their learning and findings to improve their understanding, critical thinking skills, planning and creative processes.

I also want to be an advocate for and model best practice of digital citizenship and responsibility to make sure that my student’s use of technology is safe, legal and ethical. I already know of some technological resources that can be used to help promote reflection and collaboration such as mywebspiration.com and would like to find out about more resources that are available.

I will know that I have been successful when my students demonstrate that they are more motivated to complete the task and when their performances and design ideas improve in their general level of quality.

I will also know that I have been successful when my students demonstrate that they respect, understand and exhibit the traits of being a responsible digital citizen.

Action

What actions will you take to achieve these goals?

I need to know more about how I can motivate my students to collaborate and reflect on their findings and the different types of technology that are available for me to use to do this.

I need to know more about how to teach responsible digital citizenship and have clear and defined examples of why it is necessary.

In order to achieve these goals I need to complete more research in these area and have discussions with other experts to get advice on how I can improve on these areas in the classroom.

Monitor

How will you monitor progress?

As I find out additional information, I will experiment with new resources and monitor the changes in performance, understanding and motivation of my students. If something works then I will continue to use it, and if it doesn’t then I will look for alternatives.

  

Evaluate & Extend

How will you evaluate and extend your learning?

I will compare the changes in my students performance over time and will look closely at the extent to how much I have achieved my goals and the effect it has had on the performance of my students.