Throughout this course, I learned more about being a student. Many of the things that I require from my students I was faced with during the past eight weeks. With my tumultuous personal life interfering with my learning process. I wish that I had been able to explore each of the things we learned more in depth. Creating a unit plan with a problem-based learning lesson, a collaborative lesson, as well as a digital story was incredibly insightful. Each lesson grew and developed as my understanding of each was finally realized. It was not until I was creating my digital storytelling lesson plan that I could visualize exactly how this unit would flow, and how each part builds upon the previous lesson.
In regards to my GAME plan, I was not as successful. I had set high expectations for my students and myself. During this course, my class had access to the computers six times. During those periods, we discussed digital etiquette and how to respond respectfully online. We accessed Kerpoof.com to create, share, and discuss different items. It was just an introduction to a much bigger lesson. We spent the majority of the time with the laptops working on our keyboarding skills; I realized after speaking with other teachers that because of the requirements later in school my students were not as prepared as possible. I had to spend time having students learn and have a basic understanding of keyboarding skills. They are becoming much more comfortable with a keyboard and where to find each letter, it may not be perfect, but they are still learning proper techniques.
I have been introduced to many different professional learning communities online. I have begun following different educators on Twitter, following different blogs, and accessing websites that will help me to grow and learn as a professional educator. This has been the most valuable for me. I enjoy observing other educators with their successes and failures in our profession to find things that may work or things to avoid in my classroom.
I look forward to continuing to develop my GAME plan and identify more realistic goals for a short-term project, as well as identify a long term GAME plan for the rest of this school year and to prepare for next year. For the time being, I have many new technology tools to use within my classroom. One thing that I am very excited to begin using with the new quarter is www.kidblogs.com. I am looking forward to having students write blogs as a means to respond to their reading, as well as to discuss their own learning processes. Thank you for following along as I try to make sense of an overwhelming amount of information and resources!
