Personal GAME Plan

Technology continue to play an integral role in our society today and as an educator I must endeavor to keep up-to-date with the changes and advancement of technology in order to prepare learners who can function and operate in the 21st century work environment. To be able to accomplish this I must as a digital immigrant (Prensky, 2001) integrate technology into my content area to produce self-directed learners. Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer (2009) identified that the setting of Goals, taking Action to realize the goals, Monitoring progress and Evaluating outcome (GAME) will bring about self-directed learning.

After examining the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and in particular the National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T) to assess the use of technology in my lessons, one area in which I want to strengthen my confidence and proficiency is in the design of learning activities/experiences that not only incorporate digital tools but enable my students to become active and self-directed learners. Another goal that I will set will be in the use of more virtual environments in the delivery of my lessons as part of students’ collaboration and engagement in the learning environment.

To be able to achieve the first goal I would begin with introducing my students to more authentic activities/experiences that incorporate digital tool and expose my students to other technology tools in the lesson so that they can have a wide variety to select from in order to demonstrating their learning. I also believe that the GAME plan is an ideal strategy that I can teach my students to use to become self-directed learners (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009).  As my school is located in a small community it is sometimes difficult to provide students with the real life experience necessary to cover the content due to budgetary limitation, the use of virtual environment will provide this exposure and experience without the cost. The most appropriate action to achieve this would be to carry out online research and create a bank of virtual environments that are appropriate for my content area that I can pull from as the need arise. I can also collaborate with colleagues (near and far) on virtual environments that can be used within my lessons.

To monitor the progression of getting my students to become self-directed learners, I will introduce and model the use of the GAME plan to guide my students in their learning activities. I will also solicit the help of my students with the use of the variety of digital media to be used in the classroom. Informing my colleagues of my virtual environment compilation and requesting their input in terms of monitoring and being accountable will help. Along with this I will become part of a learning community where collaboration can be done on virtual environments.

            In evaluating the success of my goals, I will use survey to obtain feedback from my students on the application of the GAME plan, the use of virtual environments and the use of the variety of technology within the lesson. Students’ records will also be look on to see if there is any significant change in their performance at the end of the period. Feedback from my colleagues will be sought as the virtual environments learnt through research would have been shared in the learning community.

References

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.

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

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).