Final Reflection

This course taught me many great ways to integrate technology into my classroom. As a teacher who is just starting out with the integration part, I feel as though the GAME plan idea really put things in perspective. Having goals set out in the beginning allowed me to go back and make sure that what I was doing was following the GAME plan. As most of us in this cohort, we are on summer break now and will not see our students until the fall. However, during the break, I can and will use this time to plan for how I will better implement my GAME plan into my classroom teachings next year.

Being a Social Studies teacher, there are numerous ways to integrate technology into the classroom. There are many historical events that have websites that are interactive for the classroom. A few that I have already have lined up for next year to use in my classroom are an "Attack on Pearl Harbor" website and a "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" website that has many ways for students to become interactive with the material. These examples are just a fraction of what is available out there for teachers like me that understand the importance to get our students involved in using technology; and then also using it to help them learn is even better! I look forward to next school year and having the ability to use technology in my content area.

Week 7 GAME Plan Update

One of my main goals as a high school teacher is to educate my students on how to be most responsible when it comes to using computers, cell phones and the internet in a productive and responsible manner. Throughout the school year, even before taking this specific course, I felt it was my responsibility to inform my students of issues happening around the nation when it came to cyber-bullying, indecent exposure incidents with teenagers and the consequences that they can face if they decide to get involved in this stuff. When we had to create a GAME plan that allows us to look at technology and how we can show our students to use in a positive way, all of these areas that I have been working so hard to educate my students in became reinforced. 

Now that this school year is over, I will work over the summer to find ways for next year on how I can best model and implement digital citizenship onto my students. I think if I can first get them to realized that the internet is not just for social networking and YouTube that will be a good place to start. Then, I will work at having them see the consequences of stealing music, movies and television shows through the internet and that real people can get into real trouble with the law. I am also going to work a lot harder at using technology and all of these amazing teaching tools that we have learned throughout this program into my curriculum. I feel as though the students deserve to have a teacher who cares about their future and understands that technology and knowing how to use it will benefit them as they grow up. 

Update on GAME Plan

These past few weeks since we have established our GAME plan, I have been trying to work on my goals. It has been very difficult because we are winding down in the school year. So to try new things is not easy as we are taking our final tests and cleaning out our lockers. However, I have been able to model and promote digital citizenship to my students. One of the aspects of promoting and modeling digital citizenship is "develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital age communication and collaboration tools."

Me and a fellow colleague of mine are working to create a nation wide discussion forum much like what we saw in this weeks DVD resource where Vicki Davis invited other teachers to discuss certain topcis through the web. In my wildest dreams, I would imagine this process looking much like those CISCO commercials on television where the classroom is equipped with a 70 inch flat screen t.v. and the picture is crystal clear, but it probably will not end up looking like that. We have sent out some emails to teachers in the southern part of the United States (Lousianan, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida) in hopes of letting our students who are in a remote part of eastern Oregon learn how those students who are their same age are dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many of my students do not get to experience life outside of our small town and I believe that opening up their eyes to fellow Americans across the country will allow them to become more aware of their lives. While we have began sending out invitations to other schools, I am not too hopeful that this will work. I will let you all know my progress as we move on throughout the Summer.

Evaluating my GAME plan progress....

It is getting a lot more difficult to practice my goals as the school year winds down. We only have a few more days to go and this last week I am not doing any new lessons where I could truly implement my GAME plan. My freshman and I are covering current issues that are occurring around the world right now. For example, The oil spill, The War in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Arizona Immigration Bill and North and South Korea. I teach Freshman World History and I purposely chose the last week of school to be designed to make these global issues aware to my students who live in a rural eastern Oregon town where they do not get to see much of the world.

I have been able to, however, use many different types of technology to show my students what is happening around the world. Normally, I will find some video clips and piece them together and show the students through the data projector. I will use Google earth to show them relative location of the event that we are discussing. So I am still able to practice my goal of demonstrating digital citizenship to my students. Many of them only use the internet for Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. They have no idea that there are thousands of uses for the internet besides these three sites. No kidding, I have had more than one student tell me they have to check out a textbook, instead of use our handy online textbook, because when they get online, they get too distracted by their social networking websites and cannot focus. Talk about getting your priorities straight!

So even though the school year is coming to an end and summer break (which sounds so nice right about now) is approaching it is not easy to practice some of technology goals in the classroom. However, with educating my students on current global issues, I am able to use many parts of the internet to research and find forms of media that can enhance their learning. Some of the things that I have learned in the past few weeks is that what we do as teachers is important. Our students look up to us no matter if they like you or hate. We have influence over our students with everything that we do. So for me, to model digital citizenship to my students and show them that this type of technology can have a great effect on their lives besides just downloading music and movies, IMing their friends and posting pictures on their pages is rewarding. Often times I think there is so much more I could be doing to assist my students, but I have to realize that even just simple conversations with students about their weekends or activities they are involved in are valuable moments with them.

I will continue to push for integrating technology into my classrooms. I have spoken with one of our administrators and mentioned to her that I am finishing up my Master's Degree in my current field. She was so excited that she has signed me up to teach a class to my fellow teachers in one of our teacher in-service days next year. I am very excited about this opportunity and hope that many of my colleagues will benefit from my experience here at Walden.