My reflection

In my reflection I will write about my GAME plans, the implementation of a problem-based learning, and the integration technology within my content.

At the beginning of the class I started two GAME plans. Over the last 7 weeks my Game plan has been evolving. My first goal was to have my students interact with French teenagers through Epals. As of today, I can say that I was able to contact a French class. French students wrote emails that I will proofread to give to my students. I will have them write back in French this week.

I decided to only involve my 8^th grade students at this point because the French students are a year older and due to the number of students who wrote. I will have my 7^th grade interact with French teenagers next school year or before the summer with another class.

It gets very overwhelming, because of the lack of time to prepare the class. Between my lesson plans, state exams, the master and the PBL assignment, I feel I am doing too much at the same time. I still need to write a letter to my principal to be able to use Epal and have students bring their parents’ authorization to interact with another student in another country. It looks like I am planning this the wrong way, but I am learning how to use this website and I did not expect the other French class to be ready to interact right away.

Next time I will be using Epal, I will do it differently.  I will wait for my students and me to be ready to contact another class.

My second goal was to share my different projects integrating new technology within my content. I already talked to my Department chair to have some time during our meeting toward the end of the year to show my work.  She agreed and will set up the meeting later on the school year. I also would like to share my work with the staff within my building but at this point I don’t think I am ready.  I would like to wait next school year at the beginning of September. By then I will be able to get a better presentation and reflection of my work. I keep having the same sentence in my mind “keep it small” (Laureate Education, 2011). Now that I know how to integrate new technology in a more efficient way within my content, I get excited and ideas come up in my mind all the time. I want to do too much too fast, and I get overwhelmed by the workload. I really need to slow down.

            Last week I implemented my lesson 1 and introduced my students to a problem-based learning (PBL). Thanks to Walden students’ feedback, I was able to modify my lesson to make it more efficient. Students were a bit confused at the beginning, but after I answer their questions they were able to understand better. The research on digital story gave them a great insight on what the final product will look like.  I know that some of my students are still not sure how they are going to do it, but I insured them that they will be alright because we will be working step by step. Now that I implemented Lesson 1, I was able to reflect on it and modified it. I tried to have students create the rubric for the research phase and the final product, but it was difficult for students. They created categories such as on task, spelling etc.… but I was not satisfied with the result. I did not think it was assessing students’ abilities throughout the unit. Next time I would like to create the rubrics and discuss them with the students. We will be able to make modifications together. This way it might help students reinforce their understanding of the PBL and I will be assessing students’ work more efficiently.

            This course was an eye opener on my class instruction. I have the technology available in my class and the ability to integrate technology within my content efficiently. Today, I have GAME plans for my instruction that will enhance my students’ learning. Now that I understand the importance of the new technology, it will help my students and me to succeed. Students will be more exposed to the 21^st century skills to help them building a better career. The biggest challenge is to start. It takes time and patience and organization to plan, but collaborating with other people through Internet has been helping me enormously. I am starting to twit with other foreign language teachers to share ideas hoping to learn from others. 

Monitoring Your GAME Plan Progress

This week, thanks to other Walden’s student’s blog, I went to different websites to check them out,  and signed in to www.Epals.com and contacted two classes in France. I want students to find a teenager of their age to be able to communicate and exchange cultures. As of today, I am still waiting for people to respond. I also created a bookmark with new websites that I can use for project or as tutorials. I am trying to determine and categorize them to make sure it is adapted to my students. I have not found a tutorial 

yet that goes along with what I am doing.

I have many ideas on how to incorporate technology and authentic learning in my class, but I need to write a GAME plan to make the lesson efficient. When I get an idea, I get excited and want to implement it right away. Then the lesson ends up not being as engaging for everybody as I hoped.

As far as my second goal, introducing my work to the staff, I am taking pictures of my students working in groups on a project integrating the laptops. I am starting the PowerPoint presentation. I still have to talk to my principal to get his authorization to talk to the staff.

As I was sharing my project with the librarian, she asked me to send an article to “The Heritage”, a school district newspaper to let the community know about the project and to represent our school. This would be another way to promote my program and the integration of new technology in the classroom.

Finally, I am starting sharing my projects with my department, and they are interesting on doing the project and asked me to teach them how to use the technology. This week I have a meeting with my department chair and I will tell her about my new project. I would like to set up a meeting with the other foreign language teachers in the district where we all would share new technology integrated in the classroom.

I feel that once you start integrating technology in your lesson, it gets very difficult to stop thinking of activities/projects I could be doing. I think I am on the right track; I would like to find a colleague on the same page so we can work together and share the workload. 

Technology

Technology

For my first action plan, I will need a computer with access to Internet to gather information on different websites. I will bookmark the interesting websites. Some of the websites require passwords from my district. For example, www.ibo.org

To communicate with other teachers, I will use emails. Even though emails can be impersonal, it is an effective way of communication. Nowadays, everybody uses his or her emails several times a day. Furthermore, I believe people are more willing to write back a brief emails than to meet after school.

Last week, I contacted the distirct to obtain the username and password necessary. I have been looking at Kids French websites to find material I could use and relate with my students but so far I am not satisfied. I will probably extend my research and contact other teachers around the world who teach the 21^st century skills and integrate technology in their lessons.

For my second indicator action plan I will introduce my work to the staff. I plan on creating of a power point on one of my project integrating new technology.

I will need a projector Elmo, the smartboard for the presentation. The visual and the video, will help the staff understand the process and in the mean time will allow them to look at students final product.

I will need a computer with Internet to research surveys on new technology in the classroom. If not satisfied, I will create my own survey on Microsoft office. When I will distribute the survey I want to give the option to the staff to respond to it electronically, or on paper.

Finally, I will need to have access to Internet and certain websites to create a wiki. Because the district blocks some websites, I will check which one I am authorized to.

So far I have been looking at surveys and find one that I adjusted to my school. I found it on www.cengage.com . It will enable me to evaluate what percentages of teachers are using new technology and where they stand on integrating it into their classroom.  I will create a power point presentation on integrating new technology in class and using the GAME plan when my students will be done creating their movie. This way I will have something concrete to show my audience. 

Game Plan

GAME PLAN

After examining the standards of the website for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), I realized that there are many indicators I need to strengthen. The first indicator I need to work on is the standard 2.b, which is to design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote students learning and creativity. I chose this indicator because I have access to the technology in my class but do not use it efficiently. Three years ago, the district equipped each classroom with a smart board a computer and Elmo. I use the board for activities such as matching, memory, and anagram but I am noticing more and more that students are not challenged and therefore do not stay on task.

            For this indicator I came up with the following GAME plan.

My goal is to integrate technology efficiently more often to my daily lessons and not just with my projects. Like the video Enriching Content Area Learning Experiences with Technology part 2 stipulates I want to make sure that I do not “integrate the lesson to the technology” (Laureate Education, 2009).

My action plan is to spend more time researching on the Internet for authentic activities within my content learning using technology. Another resource is the “smart exchange” that comes with the smart board program. Finally, I will take time to talk to other teachers in the district. Collaboration as I learned in my previous course, will allow me to “heighten my awareness of knowledge I’ve generated about teaching that I now take for granted” (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2009).

I will monitor my work by analyzing and see if I can adapt the information to my content areas. I will try to see if collaborating with other colleagues is helping me to achieve my goal. Do I need to do more research on the different type of technology? 

Finally, I will evaluate my actions. Do I implement more lessons integrating technology? Is it any easier? Did the research and collaboration help me to create lessons integrating technology more effectively? What is my next step?

My next indicator I decided to work on is 5.b exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills to others. I am fairly new in the field of teaching and in my district. One of my goals is to help others using their technology skills. When I first started, I assumed all the teachers kept up with the technology and were integrating it in their lesson daily. Today I feel teachers should take it to another level. The issue is that teachers are not train unless they just finished their undergrad and/or their graduate classes. Once I master integrating technology in my content, I will then be able to help others who struggle. For my GAME plan, my goal is to teach and/or inform my colleagues about the power of the technology in the classroom.

One of my actions is to introduce my work my colleagues. Also, I would like to survey the teachers in my building to see who uses technology and how. Eventually I would like to create a wiki for the teachers to share lesson plans, projects, and activities that enhance students learning and creativity.

I will monitor my actions by analyzing the surveys and listening to the feedback. How can I interpret them?

At last I will evaluate my actions. Did my actions have an impact on my colleagues? How? What is my next step, to help other teachers creating lesson plans with technology? What about a Professional Learning Community(PLC)?

Dana, N. F., & Yendol-Hoppey, D. (2009). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research: Learning to teach and teaching to learn through practitioner inquiry (2^nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD

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