What's YOUR GAME Plan?

As any good athlete knows, you must develop a GAME plan. No matter which team or what position you play, there should always be a way to monitor your progress and anticipate your next step. Educators are no different. In my classroom, I am constantly setting goals and expectations for my students and monitoring their progress. As a teacher, I should model those actions as well.

After looking at the ISTE website and looking at the five NETS-T performance standards, I have chosen the following two on which to work: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility and Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership.

In order to strengthen my confidence to be able to Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility I will be more aware of citing digital sources when I use a source from the Internet in a lesson. I will make sure to point this out to my students each time I use a source and explain how important it is to give proper credit where it is due. In order to evaluate my progress, I will look back at my digital presentations from time to time to ensure I have given the proper credit.

I also plan to set up a schedule for my students to use the computers. I will monitor this by keeping a record of scheduled days in the rotation of my students. Each student will sign in and out of their computer with a log that will be placed next to their station. I will evaluate the effectiveness of this by looking at the log and making modifications for time/effort spent with those students who I feel need it.

For my second standard, Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership, I am planning to attend Promethean's Train the Trainer five-part ActivInstruction series. During this week, I will be learning ways in which to teach other educators in my school as well as in my county to use Promethean's technology. I plan to hold and instruct professional development opportunities within the county and will monitor my progress by having the attendees provide feedback of the course through a survey. From the feedback I receive, I will then evaluate what needs to be changed or modified within my instruction in order to facilitate a better understanding of Promethean's technology. I will extend my learning by the use of Promethean's online forum in order to collaborate with other trainers and teachers using the software. This will connect me to others in different states and countries and provide me with the opportunity to correlate ideas in which I had not thought of before. This is probably the standard I most excited about and will have no problem staying on top of my GAME plan!

As I stated before, It is important for educators to create a GAME plan for their students as well as themselves. If we do not constantly set goals, take action, monitor, and evaluate the goals set forth, we cannot grow as teachers and therefore our students will not receive the best education possible.

Resources:

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.

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) (2008). The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS-T) and PErformance Indicatiors for TEachers. retrieved from http://www.iste.o-Trg/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/For Teachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf