GAME Plan Progress So Far

It has been about a month since the creation of my GAME plan, and so far, the plan is going well.  For the most part the plan has provided some definite benefits to my instruction, so I have no plans for major revisions of the plan, but there are a few areas that could be changed.

There were a few times when my GAME plan caused me a good deal of stress.  I had no idea how comfortable I had gotten doing things the same way, and this plan was definitely making me try new things.  One major point of contention for my students was the rotation of classes between traditional instruction and instruction incorporating technology.  As mentioned in a previous entry.  My school simply does not have the technology resources to allow me to use technology as much as my plan originally called for.  The solution was to rotate: one block would incorporate technology, the other wouldn’t.  With each lesson, the blocks would rotate.  This provided me with a base group to compare the results of incorporating technology with as well as keeping me from completely monopolizing the computer lab.  Although this seemed like a good solution, the students who were not incorporating technology into their learning were disappointed and often noticeably less engaged.

One future problem I am anticipating is using a new technology, or technology tool, each month.  In the short term, this seems quite achievable.  Looking down the road in the long term though, I have to wonder if I will be able to continue to find a new technology strategy each month.  I have discussed this with my vice principal, who is supporting and monitoring me on this GAME plan, and we have decided that for right now the plan will remain the same.  In the future though, the plan may need to be altered to use technology in a new way each month.  In this way, I could use Voicethread for example, which I have already used, as long as I am using it in a different way than I have before.  This change will allow for continuing to use strategies that prove to be especially effective instead of simply abandoning it because it has already been used.

One strategy I wanted to insure that I could continue to use was social networking.  Social networking has proven to be an effective means of gathering information, sharing information and ideas, and authentic publication of student work.  It has also proven to be an extremely effective strategy to raise student engagement.  I will continue to look for social networking tools and strategies that I have not used before but will also have the freedom to reuse strategies that have been effective.