Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Continuing the Journey: GAME plan reflection

G: My goal is to use collaborative, technology enriched open-ended projects for at least 80% of my instructional time.
A: I have researched various projects and experiments for the 1st quarter and incorporated them into my lesson plans for the 9 weeks.
M: I plan to monitor these various projects and how often I use them in my classroom using my online lesson plans.
E: As these lessons take place, I will be evaluating and extending using SMART goals that track the progress of the students and mastery level of concepts.

G: Attending at least 2 weeks of online or in person classes per year
A: Seek out and sign up for training's throughout the year. In addition, complete the course work with Walden and maintain my technology blog.
M: I will keep track of my training's through Eduphoria's Workshop function.
E: I will evaluate each course on a 1-on-1 basis and discuss with my colleagues the information learned. I will incorporated the strategies into my classroom and determine the success of implementing them.

I have not been able to attend other trainings as of yet; however, I am still searching for online trainings to benefit from. I try to look for intriguing trainings on topics that I am interested in; however, I also want to widen the possibilities to learn new information. By doing so I am exposing myself to ideas and training that I might not have thought that I would like. I am still working towards the goal of having two weeks of training completed by the end of the year.

I work on my first goal daily due to the expectations of my school and administration. It requires a lot of planning and dedication. My team started planning lessons and projects together last week and that has made this goal more manageable.

Hayley

3 comments:

Douglas Gauld said...

Hayley,

Although you have been having difficulty scheduling formal training over the past few weeks to meet you year-end goal, I have no doubt that your daily planning to comply with your first goal and the policy at your school provides ample opportunity for you to learn and develop innovative ways to integrate technology into your instruction. I have found that collaboration is generally more edifying than any formal training. Although I usually get some benefit out of technology-focused professional development, most of my learning happens when I’m exchanging ideas and methods with colleagues or figuring things out for myself. It seems the greatest resources for learning about digital technologies are the technologies themselves. Much of the hardware and software is designed to explain itself, and YouTube videos seem to cover most of the rest. Regarding my school system, formal technology training (excepting that which focuses on required proprietary software) is generally years behind. An extreme example of this occurred last September, the autumn of 2009, when the staff of my school had a mandatory professional development session on how to use email. This seems insane, until you consider the position the school system was in. They wanted to begin communicating with teachers primarily through email (making communication more reliable and verifiable while saving paper and pricey ink), but they couldn’t before assigning all teachers email addresses and removing the excuse (however implausible) that some did not know how to use the technology. We were joking that the following month’s training would focus on how to use a videocassette recorder because we had trained ourselves and one-another years ago. But I guess that’s not so crazy. There’s a school-issued telephone on my desk that I have no idea how to operate.

-Dug

Beau Garrett said...

Hayley,

Keep working. I too am searching for numerous professional learning opportunities that I can fit into my schedule. It always seems like I may find one or two great opportunities but I am unable to attend them due to scheduling conflicts. You can reach your of having two weeks of training by the end of the year if you do not give up. Good luck with achieving your goals.

Jonathan Garrett

Jody Albarez said...

Hayley,

Your goals are very specific and technology- driven. It is clear that you are striving to continue your training in this area and I have no doubt that you will succeed.
Professional development in technology is a perpetual event. Due to the nature of technology's constant evolution, one can never truly "master" all that is out there. We can, however, try to master the ability to infuse technology into our classrooms.

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