Week 7 Final Reflection

My final post for Integrating Technology into the Classroom will give a final update on my GAME plan and will comment on how this class will affect my future teaching. 

My GAME plan did not go as planned, however I made progress and am poised to finish my plan at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year.  I was not able to generate logins for each of my students, nor was I able to give any assessments or use Edmodo.com to communicate with parents.  I am excited to include directions to access Edmodo in my beginning-of-the-year packet, and know the momentum I began this month will carry to next school year.  As of now, my plan will not be modified, as I still believe Edmodo is the right tool to satisfy my chosen ISTE standards. 

One way I might use the GAME plan process with my students is for student to make four or five goals for the year in September.  Several of my students struggle with completing homework and getting help when needed.  If I give these two areas as individual goals, and the other goals created by each individual student for themselves, my students may be off to a focused start for next year.  The action part of the game plan will be completed by both the students and myself, as they most likely will need assistance in what actions they need to show to meet their goals.  Monitoring and evaluating will need to be done on a weekly basis for some, monthly for others, based on the student.  This hopefully will be a successful attempt at improving student performance for my 8^th graders next year.

I am excited to use technology in my teaching next year, as I not only will have a SMART board to help with daily assignments and communication to my students, I have also picked up three important instructional tools from this class: PBL, social networking, and digital storytelling. 

Next year I will be teaching only math to 7^th and 8^th graders.  The problem-based learning lesson I created for the Pythagorean theorem worked well with my current 7^th graders, and I will use this again next year for my new 7^th graders.  Students learned the concept of the Pythagorean theorem faster than typical, as they were able to derive the formula instead of simply being taught the formula.  Social networking will already be the norm in my classroom through Edmodo.com.  Once I roll Edmodo out to my students in September, I will monitor whether it makes sense to also create a blog for my classroom or if Edmodo truly satisfies the communication and learning needs my class requires.  Finally, digital storytelling is an exciting way to present information.  We currently have only a few video cameras available to us at my school, and relied heavily on cell phones and laptop cameras to create video.  My students and I all need a crash course in using movie-making software, but that will be a goal of my own and my class technology coordinator next year.  My goal is to get at least three digital storytelling projects under my belt during the next school year.