GAME Plan

According to Dr. Peggy Ertmer, integrating technology effectively into the classroom requires confidence in your ability to use technology (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).  In order to increase my confidence, I will use the GAME plan to set Goals, take Action, Monitor my learning and Evaluate my progress towards meeting the ISTE NETS Performance Indicators for Teachers (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009; International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).  

The first performance indicator I am going to focus on is to “provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).  In order to increase my confidence in this indicator, I am going to employ the use of a technology that is new to my campus, Activotes from Promethean.  My goal is to effectively incorporate the use of Activotes, which are hand held voting devices that can be used for both summative and formal assessments, into my daily instruction.  In order to do this, I am going to have to take quite a bit of action.  First, I have to familiarize myself with the Promethean software tools linked to the Activotes.  I will be taking a series of classes offered by my IT department to learn how these tools work and how to create assessments that utilize them to their fullest potential.  I will be able to monitor my learning through the actual use of these tools in my classroom.  Activotes are a very useful assessment tool because they provide and immediate report of the students performance on the assessment in an Excel spreadsheet.  I will be able to evaluate my students learning in real time and will be able to use those results to inform my next instructional step in a more immediate time frame, rather than taking the time to grade paper based assessments and then apply what the results show to my instruction.  These will help me to answer the questions that all educators have when evaluating instructional effectiveness: “Did my lesson or unit plan work?; In not, should I modify the goals, the assessment or my instructional strategies?; What should I do differently in the future?”  (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, P. 86.)

The second performance indicator that I would like to increase my confidence in is to “demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).  I have been shying away from this performance indicator for this entire school year.  Last year, I had a Promethean Board in my room, an interactive whiteboard.  This year I moved my classroom to a different location and my room now has a SmartBoard, a different brand of interactive whiteboard.  I have been somewhat negligent in regards to using my SmartBoard.  Because my Promethean software is somewhat compatible with the SmartBoard, I have been using only Promethean software with the board, and I have not been using the SmartTools that the board is equipped with.  Therefore, I am not using the board to its fullest potential, as I am most often battling compatibility issues between the board and the software that I use with it.  My goal to meet this indicator is to apply my knowledge of Promethean software to the use of SmartBoard software, this would illustrate my self directed learning by transferring skills between technologies (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).  I plan to do this by utilizing my amazingly supportive culture of tech savvy teachers in my district, doing so is essential to integrating technology effectively (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).  Plenty of my colleagues are familiar with SmartBoards and would be willing to help me learn the technology.  I will monitor my progress by keeping a digital daily reflective journal of what I have learned and what I have become more comfortable with.  This journal will also help me to evaluate my progress in meeting this goal.

In order to meet this goal, I am open to any suggestions from my colleagues at Walden as well.  If anyone has experience with SmartBoards I would love to hear from you! I am a novice with mine, and in desperate need of developing some knowledge of how to use this technology. 

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/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009).  Enriching Content Area Learning Experiences with Technology Part 1. [DVD].  Baltimore, MD (Author).

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2009).  Promoting self-directed learning. [DVD].  Baltimore, MD (Author).

Promethean Interactive Whiteboards.  (2011).  Promethean Interactive Whiteboards and Classroom Technology.  Retrieved from http://www.prometheanworld.com/. 

Smart Technologies. (2011).  Smart Board Interactive White Board.  Retrieved from http://www.smarttech.com/.