EDUC 6713 - GAME Plan Reflection

My GAME Plan Reflection

            As I continue on with my professional career, I understand the importance of using assessment data to drive my instructional practices. This is something that I did not do very well early on in my career. However, with the implementation of No Child Left Behind, high stakes testing, and now our district’s new teacher evaluation system which bases part of my evaluation on students’ test scores, I know I must continue to improve in that area. With those thoughts in mind, I focused my first GAME Plan goal on using technology to track student progress:

Goal:

To utilize technology to track student progress on summative assessments to help students pinpoint areas of mastery and improvement.

NETS-T #1

2d. Provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards, and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching.

There are two factors that made it difficult to assess whether or not this goal was achieved. First, being on sabbatical has been quite challenging in that it can be difficult to get other people to help you follow through on certain tasks. At times, I have had to try to make things happen from afar and that has been somewhat frustrating. Also, the beginning of the school year is a very tough time to track a lot of change as a result of a goal being implemented. With various beginning of the year testing and back to school activities, students are now just finally getting in to the swing of things. To date, students have only completed one paragraph assignment and so more data is needed to track progress over time. I am hoping that by November, students will have at least three completed paragraph assignments with graded information logged on to their spreadsheet. At that point, we should be able to do a better job of figuring out areas of weakness.

Once we figure out areas of needed improvement, I can see my students utilizing the GAME plan method to establish writing goals for themselves. Each individual student could utilize a writing journal (either online or in a notebook) and write a goal based on their areas of need (which will be determined from logging rubric information into the spreadsheet). Then, students could outline actions for accomplishing this goal, describe ways to monitor their progress, and finally evaluate the effectiveness of the goal after a month or two of instruction. Obviously, I think the GAME plan method fits nicely into the writing curriculum because each student has such a vast range of skills when it comes to their written work. By having students create their own GAME plan to address writing weaknesses, I will be able to differentiate instruction more appropriately. All of this can happen by creating a simple spreadsheet, having students track their own progress to look for data trends, and asking them to reflect on their strengths and needs to define goals for future improvement.

            

           My second goal was created due to the amount of work that both my students and I complete on the Internet:

Goal #2:

To model appropriate use of citing references on the Internet, and hold students accountable for using text, graphics, videos, and other media from the Internet by adding a “Citing References” section to their assignment rubrics.

NETS-T #2

4a. Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.

The courses at Walden have taught me the need to give credit to others for their work. As a teacher, I had already understood the importance of this when conducting research and taught my students the importance of this as well. However, I never considered that when using images, movies, and other digital media found on the Internet, I was using someone else’s work and also needed to properly credit the source. This was one of those major ah ha moments, and I then knew I had to do something to stress the importance of digital citizenship. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) also has a list of Standards for Students (2007). Of the six technology standards for students, Standard 5 is focus on the digital citizenship and having “students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior” (p. 2).

I have already begun to model this digital citizenship while creating presentations and other media formats for my students by citing all graphic images that have been taken from the Internet and used in the presentation. In EDUC 6712, Supporting Information Literacy and online Inquiry in the Classroom, we learned the importance of modeling various skills and concepts to students (Eagleton and Dobler, 2007). Modeling not only provides students with examples of expectations, but it gives students a frame of reference. Students are more likely to remember something if it is shown or demonstrated to them rather than just having them read about it or put it in the directions. Moving forward, this will continue to be a focus for both teacher and student-made presentations.       

One aspect of this particular goal that I may consider revising is the use of NoodleTools.com. My students have been taught this online tool from the moment they enter the middle school. They use it in all of their classes, and it is helpful for them to create a bibliography or reference list. While I understand that this is one of those technological tools that help students complete certain parts of a project, I can’t help but feel that students should be taught how to create reference lists on their own. With NoodleTools.com, students simply copy and paste the information into the site, and the program will create the reference list based on what was input. I have found that students do not really understand how to create a reference list by using this tool, and I feel like they need to know this skill in the future. Therefore, I need to determine if I want to continue to use NoodleTools.com for research projects. Also, if I stick with using it, do I find a way to cite graphics/images with the program? All of these thoughts need more consideration moving forward.

This course, like all other courses in Walden has taught me the continued need to integrate technology into my instructional practices. However, I do not need to use technology just to say I used technology. I need to look at my curriculum content, standards, objectives, and IEP goals and fine ways to use technology to address those points (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009a). I think I have done a fairly good job with this and find relevant activities that meet both student and curricular needs. The one problem I have is I feel the need to implement everything I learn, but that is just not possible. I need to stick to a few tools that work well for my instructional practices but also allow students to select tools to create their projects.

In this class, I have learned a lot about problem-based learning, online collaboration, and digital storytelling. For our last three application assignments, I believe I have developed an engaging unit focused on a problem-solution essay. Students must help come up with solutions to a current problem we are facing in our school (equal technology access) and write an essay proposing possible solutions. During the drafting process, students will use a blog to write daily reflections about their writing process while giving and receiving feedback from peers. The final step in the unit will have the students create a digital story to share with other teachers, students, and administrators asking for help in solving this problem.

Goal-setting is a critical component for not only students to move forward in their educational careers, but also for teachers to move forward in their professional careers. By continuing to implement the GAME plan method in my professional endeavors, I will be able to find ways to meet the needs of all the students in my classroom by understanding how they learn best, what makes them tick, and how to get them to meet state and national standards (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b).

References

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for Internet inquiry. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2007). ISTE standards students. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-S_PDF.pdf.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009a). Integrating technology across the content areas: Enriching content area learning experiences with technology, part 1. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009b). Integrating technology across the content areas: Promoting self-directed learning with technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Mandy Derfler’s Blog. (2014, September 8). EDUC 6713 – My personal game plan. Retrieved from http://mandyderfler4.blogspot.com/2014/09/educ-6713-my-personal-game-plan.html.

ReadWriteThink.org. (n.d.). Exploring plagiarism, copyright, and paraphrasing. Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/exploring-plagiarism-copyright-paraphrasing-1062.html?tab=4#tabs

Image References

Picture 1: http://leadershiptraq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/reflection_28.jpg 

Picture 2: http://www.bottlesurf.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/goals3.jpg

Picture 3: https://fisher.osu.edu/blogs/macc-admissions/files/job-reference-check.jpg