GAME Plan Reflection

My GAME plan started with two overarching goals based the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NET-T) from the International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE): Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity and Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments. These two standards can encompass a tremendous amount of work, but as I created my action planned, I found a way to accomplish them simultaneously.

At first I was skeptical about writing out a GAME plan and monitoring and evaluating it weekly. It seemed to be a waste. However, I am amazed at how much more I accomplished towards achieving my goals because I constantly read and reviewed what I had set out to do. Our last blog post required me to think about using the GAME plan with my students. How powerful it would be for my students to experience the success in setting and accomplishing a goal!

I required a weekly session in the computer lab to force the completion of these actions. By visiting the lab every week, I needed to plan lessons that would facilitate student learning. Also by visiting the lab every week, my students would be developing digital-age learning experiences as we explored and utilized new technology tools. Since I created my original GAME plan at the beginning of this course, I only included Webquests into my action plan. I am so excited about the new tools I experienced during this course: www.epals.com for online collaboration, digital-storytelling (most likely Photostory), and Problem-based learning projects that can incorporate a variety of technological tools.

When we return to school, I am going to continue working on my GAME plan. The new tools I experienced in this course have me excited about using them with my students. I am constantly brainstorming ways I can use blogs, wikis, digital-storytelling, and PBL. I am also thinking of ways to fit these new projects into my schedule. I try to remind myself that my students will learn content more deeply when they experience learning in their “language” (Prensky, 2001). I don’t want them to learn everything an inch deep and a mile wide. I’d rather go for an inch wide and a mile deep!