Reflection: GAME Plan

In retrospect, the value of the GAME plan enabled me to learn how to set goals that are necessary to evaluate my students’ as well myself. One positive lesson that I learnt from monitoring my GAME plan was that, I need to have a plan that will help me to be accountable for my students’ learning. Not all goals were achieved but I remain confident that in the future, I can revisit the goal where by I would like my students to be more actively engaged with technology tools. So far, the use of the digital camera to provide authentic images for use in discussions, problem-solving activities and for reinforcing a topic have had far greater effect on my students’ rather than using only textbook pictures. “While we can certainly learn many things by reading textbooks and by observing others complete task, the most natural form of learning involves active, hands-on concrete experience” (Cennamo, Ross, Ertmer, 2009, p. 31). Hence my students will be required to use digital cameras and the Internet to assist them as they promote tourist attractions in selected countries that will be done in the form a brochure.

The GAME plan was also instrumental in allowing me to experience practical ways to share teaching-learning developments with colleagues. “Collaborative activities involve the engagement of students in deep conversations about both the processes and the products of learning” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 39). Teachers can only develop confidence in using specific learning techniques like that of blogging about goals. By sharing my approach to execute the GAME plan and modify my actions with my colleagues, I received added inspiration to persevere at realizing the full potential of setting goals.

Based on the reading from throughout this course, I am more conscious that I need to be more steadfast at empowering my students to use technology in their learning. Therefore, I plan to give my students more challenging tasks to conduct research about topics that they will use to create word documents and quizzes for the class. I also want may student to engage in more open discussions so I will plan in advance some videos that will help develop their listening, speaking, and writing skills.
Finally, based on this week’s learning I am reminded that, “working in technology-enriched learning environments, students will benefit from having guidelines that indicate what they should accomplish during the lesson, what they are expected to have ready beforehand, and what they should do after their computer time is over, including self-assessment activities” (Cennamos, Ross, Ertmer, 2009, p. 97). I am certainly in the right direction to empower myself and my students as we make more constructive and efficient use of technology inside and outside the classroom.

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.

Blog Post: Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

Based on the International Society for Technology in Education, I believe my students can benefit from the GAME Plan which aims at moulding them to embrace to following three standards:

1. Creativity and Innovation: create original works as a means of personal or group expression.

2. Communication and Collaboration: communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.

3. Digital Citizenship: exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.

Students must be given substantial reasons that the standards as outlined in the GAME Plan will increase their awareness on the use of technology tools. To help students monitor their involvement and applications they would be appraised on a weekly basis to track their progress. Students would also be asked to create online portfolios where they will save works that demonstrate their application of utilizing the technology tools to achieve creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration and digital citizenship. Also, to hold students accountable for their interaction with technology for study, I will ask parents and guardians to sign monthly supervision records that stipulate how many contact hours were utilized for doing educational online learning.

If the GAME Plan can be altered to facilitate more meaningful lessons, then students would be given the opportunity to suggest ways to make the plans more feasible.

Revising Your GAME Plan

My GAME Plan is definitely a work in progress. I am confident that I will achieve all the goals I set out to accomplish by the end of the school term. I have learnt that not all educators are confident in using technology in the classroom especially the older teachers. Therefore, I am more patient with these teachers who simply need a bit of encouragement to manipulate the software that supplements the textbook. One goal from NETS that I aim to continue in my GAME Plan is to facilitate and inspire students' learning and creativity. By helping students to experience authentic learning situations, they will more likely to be enthused about learning a foreign language. So as I correspond with some of my students via email, I hope to extend this learning beyond teacher student dialogue to student dialogue as they are in different location. In order to improve my ability to become more proficient at using online tools, I would like to experiment with some of the suggestions from my colleagues about how to make utilize the tools of technology to allow students to participate in active learning with adequate scaffolding.

Evaluating Your Game Plan Progress

My aim for this week is to download at least two videos about the events of Christmas and another video pertaining to culture or a topical issue. Then I plan to ask my students to listen to the videos and discuss in small groups what they have watched. I will also give my students a topic from the videos to debate the pros and cons of the target topic. Then I plan to video my students as they work in groups and make their presentation. Since my classroom is not wired with the Internet, I will need to download a program that will allow me download videos and play them while offline. This is something new for me to explore even though I have always wanted to but now I feel I need to be a more assertive digital citizen and take my game plan seriously. In the words of Mike Trout, “Technology is ruled by two types of people: those who manage what they do not understand, and those who understand what they do not manage.” I believe I fall some where among those two categories but I want to gradually feel empowered to make use of what I already know and build on that which I need to know.