GAME Plan Success

In my GAME Plan, as I amended it along the way, I wanted to develop my abilities to promote student reflections, using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning and creative process, and to advocate, model and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology. After learning more about UDL, I decided to add one more goal to my GAME plan, that was customizing and personalizing learning activities, to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities, using digital tools and resources.

As I reflect back on the past 7 weeks, I recognize that I attained many of my GAME Plan's objectives, and I successfully incorporated them in to the Problem Based Learning project I developed. Having my students employ concept mapping, wiki and voice thread tools met my first objective of using collaborative tools to spur conceptual understanding, thinking, and creativity. By incorporating several of these same tools, and including mentoring, and providing individualized assistance within my plans, I believe I adequately achieved the objectives of Universal Design for Learning, by recognizing and supporting diverse learning styles, and abilities to use digital tools. I also included in my lessons a requirement for students to cite and give appropriate references for their Internet sources which addresses the standard of ethical use of digital information.

These objectives, and the GAME Plan that I developed which encompassed them, has given me a greater insight into the possibilities digital technology offers me as a teacher, and enhanced my abilities to design future learning opportunities for my students. I plan to employ many of these ISTE/NETS Teacher and Students standards in my classroom, when the fall semester begins. I feel that I have been successful in meeting the course objectives, and look forward to continuing to develop my teaching abilities and knowledge of technology.

John C.