Carrying out your GAME plan

Last week we were asked to choose two NETS standards that we would like to improve upon and become more comfortable with. The two standards that I chose were: 2.c. customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources and 4.d. develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures usingdigital-age communication and collaboration tools. I think that by improving in these two areas, my students will be able to gain a much better understanding of the content and be able to retain the information.

In order to carry out my plan, there are certain resources that I will need. In order to customize and personalize learning activities, I will need access to the Internet. This is usually where I go to find new ideas for my teaching. Visiting different forums and blogs allow me to gather a wide variety of ideas to create lessons from. Since receiving our Promethean boards this year, I have also found the Promethean Planet website extremely helpful. While this website has activities that are already created, they also offer resource packs for you to download to create your own activities and games. There are also several different forums and message boards on this site in order to gain new ideas. Finally, I can use my colleagues for new and exciting ideas. Sometimes, just listening to a lesson others teach inspires a whole new lesson that would work wonderfully for your own students.

The additional information needed for this standard would obviously be knowing the students I will have next year. I will need to look through their files, learn what areas they have trouble with, and just spend time getting to know them so that I know what learning styles fit them best. You cannot create a personalized lesson without first knowing the people you will be presenting it to. There are several lessons I have used this year that never would have worked in the past based solely on the students that were in my room. So far, I have taken several steps to implement this plan. I have spent a lot of time on the Promethean Planet website, as well as, brainstorming with other teachers in my building for different ideas on teaching skills. I take what I have found in these areas and add personal touches to them that I know will capture the attention of my students and assist them in learning the material.

In order to model cultural understanding and engage with colleagues and students of other cultures, I will need to find an online "pen pal" system such as Epals. Through this site, I should be able to connect with a teacher from another country. This teacher and I would be able to correspond and decide if a partnership could be set up. We would be able to discuss the different standards our students must learn and decide how we can help each other accomplish these. We would need to e-mail often to correlate lessons and activities we would want our students to complete together. It would take some time and effort on our parts, but hopefully it would turn out to be a rewarding experience for the students. I would still need to gather a great deal of information in this area because I have never done anything like this before. Therefore, I have not taken many steps to implement this plan yet. So far, I plan to look into these sites over the summer and try to get something set in place for around the middle of the school year next year.

References:

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/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf