Week 3 Game Plan Monitoring

Week 3- 11/15/11

Burton, Maureen

Over the last week I have been working on the implementation of my GAME Plan.  My first GAME Plan was to integrate my Mimio Board into my instruction.  It is important to continue how well a new technology is meeting your goals and evaluate its effectiveness (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009, p. 75).  I set the goal of using it at least once a week so here is my progress so far.  Last week I had my students work on Digital Story making using storyjumper.com.  I then had my students put them up on the Mimio Board and use the tools to help each other edit and revise their work.  It was one the most engaging editing/revising activities I have ever done with students.  I had 15 sixth graders who were almost attacking me to get their hands on the Mimio pen to make corrections.  It is important for teachers to understand their students’ learning style preferences in order to provide successful learning experiences (Cennamo, Ross & Ertmer, 2009, p. 166).  I will guarantee that if it had been on a worksheet, the level of engagement would have been minimal. 

Today the administration told me that my remedial reading class would be part of the “Focus on Education” tour.  With the news that the superintendent and community members would be coming in to observe in my classroom in two hours, I did what any good teacher would do.  First, I panicked, and then there was the frantic cleaning of my room, and then trying to come up with the best lesson possible.  I decided to showcase my use of the Mimio Board with a group of five students who were editing a Digital Storybook.  I had five others working on research on my classroom computers for the Earth Day multi-media project and the other five were playing a matching game with Greek and Latin roots.  I am happy to report that everyone was impressed with everything my students were doing.  As for me, I am so happy with my progress on diving into the use of my Mimio Board and being comfortable enough to have the superintendent and community members watch how I was integrating it into instruction.  I believe that I am on track for Game Plan 2.

As for Game Plan 1, we are beginning the research for a real world project for Earth Day, but I do not think that there is a high level of engagement yet.  We have not gotten too far into the use of digital tools.  I guess I can take credit for using digital resources by searching on the Internet, but it is all about taking small steps forward.  On a project like this, the research needs to be done before creating with new digital tools can happen.  I told the superintendent and community members that we would be completing the project for our town’s Earth Day celebration, so in that respect, I am now locked into creating a quality project.  Mrs. H gave me some great advice on how my students might use a Wiki to gather their information.  I think this would be a good idea and one of the many digital tools we use to create our project.

Reference

Cennamo, k., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.