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.