Personal Game Plan

Teachers are always asked to reveal their game plan, "How do you plan to achieve your goals?" Dr. Katherine Cennamo suggests that both teachers and students need to develop game plans. To be a self-directed, independent problem-solver, you have to plan, monitor, and evaluate your actions (Laureate Education, 2009). This process is how teachers continue to grow professionally.

After reflecting upon the National Educational Technology Standards for Students, I have identified two areas that I would like to improve upon. First, I would like to develop and design digital-age assessments (International Society for Technology and Education [ISTE], 2008). Although I have become proficient with technology integration and its ability to promote student learning, I have not ventured into digital assessments. In the future, I would like to create more opportunities for technology related assessments. These assessments might include, Word documents, graphic organizers, presentations, surveys, learner response systems, or teacher-created on-line assessments. During the next year, I plan to organize a digital assessment portfolio. Many systems, such as Discovery Education, have this component accessible with your subscription. I want to create assessments that can be stored and accessed electronically. By doing this, I hope to electronically analyze student data and progress. As I embark on this task, I will research various electronic assessment platforms, to identify those that best fit my personal needs.

Secondly, I plan to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility (ISTE, 2008). I believe it is important to teach students about safe, legal, and ethical use of technology. Our students are engaged in many social interactions, via the Internet. As educators, we need to teach them how to appropriately correspond with others. I want my students to recognize the potential of the Internet, and its ability to help them collaborate with their peers and other cultures from around the world. In order to achieve this task, I plan to design several lessons that teach my students about Internet safety and ethical use procedures. My students will be responsible for exploring Internet safety and ethical practices through the use of a webquest. Then, they will be required to sign an Internet safety and ethical use pledge, which will outline appropriate behavior. I will share additional Internet safety information with parents via our class website. In order to promote collaboration, I plan to incorporate the use of wikis, blogs, and video conferencing to help students develop an awareness of the capabilities of these tools. As we utilize these tools, we will evaluate their user friendliness and appropriateness. I will continue to attend professional conferences and workshops to identify emerging technologies to help us achieve our goals.

For professional development to occur, every teacher has to have a game plan. We need to identify our goals, set expectations and timelines for their accomplishment, and reflect upon our results. Technology integration is no different. You learn which technologies align to your curriculum and best fit the needs of your students through exploration.

References:

International Society for Technology and Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

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