Developing My Own GAME Plan

     Self-directed lifelong learning is defined as “…any increase in knowledge, skill, accomplishment, or personal development that an individual selects and brings about by his or her efforts…” (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009, p.2).   In my opinion, a person who is self-directed depends on a high level of creativity that helps to perpetuate their desire to learn.  For a teacher, the challenge is to actively engage the learner with instruction that has meaning or authenticity.  One way to ensure teachers “turn on the lights” and actively engage students is to immerse students in a technological environment they have already been living within outside of school (Prensky, 2008). 

     To help accomplish this goal, Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer (2009) further define self-directed lifelong learning as a GAME plan where one sets Goals, takes Action to meet such goals, and then Monitors and Evaluates the progress.  This blog entry is a summary of my GAME plan to satisfy at least two indicators in the National Education Standards for Teacher (NETS-T), on the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) website, in an effort to strengthen my confidence in using technology in the classroom.

GOALS

     Since my content area of mathematics stereotypically uses a lecture-style instruction format, I would like to find digital tools that support learning in other venues.  While I feel that I have already engaged students in authentic learning projects, I now would like to focus on refining daily classroom tasks to inspire my students more frequently. 

     In an effort to inspire learning and creativity, I believe that students can benefit from collaboration to clarify their understanding.  More importantly, I believe students can gain tremendously from having a teacher who models the behavior I would like my students to emulate.  For that reason, after examining the ISTE NETS-T (2008) I have identified one standard with two of four respective indicators that seem to align with my goals.  I will try to strengthen my technology confidence and proficiency by improving the following:   

1.    Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

c)    Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.

d)    Model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students, colleagues, and others in face-to-face and virtual environments.

ACTION

     To refine my day-to-day routine, it would probably help to describe what already exists.  Each day in my classroom, I start out checking homework for completion and then review the answers from an answer key on the interactive whiteboard.  Kids are expected to grade their own work and ask to see problems they had difficulty completing.  Normally, this does pretty well for most of the students; most of the time it is a sufficient process but follows the typical instructor/student lecture format.  My hopes are to incorporate students in this homework review by having them collaborate and create a homework answer key on a wiki.  After they develop the answer key, students will lead the homework review discussion.

     My thoughts are that students will be divided into small groups whose responsibility will be to complete the assignment on the wiki.  After the students have finished, I will have them present the solutions to the class using the interactive whiteboard through accessing the wiki.  At first, this attempt will be weekly.  After students gain familiarity with this process, we will increase the frequency of the activity to twice a week.  Ultimately, I would like this to happen on daily basis.

MONITOR

     Since students will be divided up into small groups, I will need to make sure that one student does not assume a dominant role such that other students cannot learn from the process (Cennamo et al, 2009).  This may mean that I need to participate on the wiki to provide guidance.  Other times, I may need to analyze the activity on the wiki and determine who responsible for a majority of the presentation.  By monitoring the activity, I will be able to help equitably distribute the work load and develop the dominant student into one of leadership and instruction.

     Additionally, I may need to revise this plan depending upon my students’ access to the technology and proficiency with the software.  This could require a few days in class to be used to train students how to effectively use the wiki program.  At any rate, I will need to closely monitor technology access and proficiency so that my classroom goals can be reached.

EVALUATE

     By using the computer as a conferencing tool and communicating their results to the class, students will be participating in a holistic activity that utilizes cross-content skills and includes them in a challenging activity (Cennamo et al., 2009).  These efforts not only help to create a self-directed lifelong learner, but they offer an window for both teachers and students alike to extend their learning and apply what they have learned to new scenarios.  In this case, students will be using technology and collaboration to produce a finished product.

     This product can be assessed for effectiveness by analyzing student time spent on the wiki as well as the student’s individual role in presenting the answer key to the class.  I will be creating a rubric to formally assess their performance outlining time spent on the wiki, time spent during the presentation, accuracy of the product, etc.  Informally, I imagine the level of new scenarios, probing questions, and self-directed learning should be on the rise.  How to evaluate this information is going to be tricky.  For this task, I think that journaling the occurrences of these events both before and after implementing the GAME plan will assist in monitoring the growth of students.   Additionally, holding focus group interviews can be of great assistance when measuring qualitative performance as well.

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

Prensky, M. (2008). Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65(6), 40–45.