GAME Plan Progress

This past Saturday I participated in an annual "idea expo" set up by my county's education foundation. This was the first time I participated as a presenter of an idea for which I was awarded a grant. For the first time, I found myself in front of other teachers, showing them how to blog on a website that I use with my students, showing them also how to create a Voice Thread, and discussing how I integrated this technology into my idea, which is a year-long student autobiography incorporating reflective, narrative and expository writing as well as a research-based multimedia presentation.

During the same day I went to workshops presented by other teachers, and understood more about how to integrate technology quickly into my subject area. Going back to the goals I set for myself in terms of the NETS-T standards fro engaging in professional growth and leadership, I feel proud of the fact that I was able to get over my fears about delivering materials to adults, and in spite of technical difficulties at the site (a local university) was able to present my ideas and even fuse them with tips i had picked up during the day from other presenters. I feel that I extended my learning by adding to my presentation a wealth of ideas I gleaned from my master's course, and I openly told the attendees that I had just learned some of the tools I was presenting, and that I am constantly trying out new resources.

I am still working on seamlessly infusing technology into the curriculum, and on the collaborative work with students. I noticed that students really appreciate it when teachers work with them instead of limiting themselves to delivering information; this is how I am interpreting the NETS standard that reads, "model collaborative knowledge construction by engaging in learning with students." I have core groups of students in each of my classes that have really bought into collaborative online learning, but there are other students who have not, and my goal is to reach those students as well. I was able to work closely together with a group of 7th grade boys whose assignment was to analyze a commercial, design a new commercial for the same product with a different audience, analyze it according to its persuasive elements, and then make the commercial. They were having a very difficult time getting started, but when I showed them the basics in GarageBand and iMovie, they took over and produced a fine piece of work, in which one of them was even filmed doing a backflip as part of their script. Some of the analysis was sacrificed, though, and my goal is to ensure that none of the content gets lost in the joy of using the resources.

I still really need to work with getting more of my colleagues on board with blogging and social networking: one major stumbling block here is that most teachers, unlike me, do not have a laptop cart in their rooms, and are usually unable to gain access to one. The media center, with its bank of computers, is very difficult to book, which leaves most teachers with virtually no access for students. I really would like to find the mega-grant to change this situation, so if any of you have some practical suggestions, please let me know. So I suppose a "new' (or rather, renewed) goal is to find the means to update technology in our school, since it is threatened with "extinction" (lack of funding).