I have a reoccurring theme in my blog posts; be patient. A question I have is can you reach a goal? Is there room for complacency in teaching? Should I have my lesson and unit plans laminated? My answer is no to all. I believe I can be happy with my progress in my GAME plan. I can be happy and proud of the strides I am beginning to make, but I am not convinced that you can “make it” in teaching. I believe you can always improve. With this in mind, I suppose my GAME plan will always be evolving and changing. I am the type of person who will always seek professional development opportunities. I just received an email about a course on Kudo animation. However, I will not be attending the in-service. Does this mean I need to revise my GAME plan because I was not allowed to attend? Again, the answer is no. A colleague of mine who is finishing this program in December will work with me and we will investigate this tool together. I believe working within the context you have is a key to succeeding in any GAME plan. I will continue to lobby for programs and technology tool I believe will benefit the students at my school. Although not necessarily technology based, I have been recently appointed to a behaviour committee at my school. I am growing into a stronger leadership role in my school.
Unwittingly I have been trying to inspire student learning and creativity by the use of technology in the classroom. Without investigating the NETS-T standards, I did not know I was working on this goal. My experience is that students want to use technology in their learning. They use technology as an everyday part of their lives. Why should school be such a drastic change for them? I have two adapted students who have done research on an endangered species. They have incorporated their research into a script and will make a video for their presentation. Without my encouragement, I do not know if they would have been this excited about this project.
I look at the NETS –T and see they are separated into five distinct goals. I am not sure if you can achieve them one by one. Although I see value in a GAME plan and they are important, these standards weave themselves into each other to make a whole. You can hardly work on one of these standards without touching on the other four.
References:
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/
2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Rusty,
ReplyDeleteIt seems that many of us are becoming more influential in how our schools operate. I have read several blog posts where classmates speak of creating clubs, or influencing peers and administrators. As you have stated, the change takes time, perhaps months or even years. I would find it interesting to see what affect we have had in our schools two years from now.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteIf we can keep our momentum after this program ends, there could be some positive changes in schools across North America.