Week 3 Blog posting, what can I do to achieve my GAME Plan

         

            As I researched about what I could do to continue to implement my personal GAME plan this week, I have seen the need to completely update my classroom website.  I will no longer be using the site that is provided by my school district.  At my district, we are using Moss, it is not user friendly.  Parents and students have a difficult time accessing the information that I post there.  They can not open some files and they are asked for passwords most the time when they are not in the district’s servers.  I will be using Weebly for my new site.  At this site, I can have full control of what is there and when it can be open to be shown to students.  By that I mean that I can upload a couple of chapter’s worth of information and hide what they do not need until later.  I have found that to be worth so much to me.  I can spend a few hours one day prepping out and not have to worry about it at a later time.  Another thing that is nice with a Weebly site is that it can allow students to respond to questions that I post there.  They can also ask each other questions in an open forum.  This will allow students to collaborate with each other and to let students that might be quite in class become an important resource to others while online.  Also, I can just place a hyperlink on my school’s site that will link them to my new Weebly site.  I also plan on utilizing my school’s email service through our online grade book program, Skyward.  There I will be able to email any of my classes the information that they need and I can also attach documents to the emails.  This is a great service that I already have, but I have not taken full advantage of it.  I plan on using it weekly for letting families to know what is coming up during the week and to announce any upcoming assessments. 

            My second goal is going to take more time to develop enriched lessons.  What I can do to achieve that goal is to continue to search the internet for activities that correspond to what chapter I am in, even for review.  As stated by Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, “Digital tools offer several opportunities for embedding strategies within the learning process”, (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009, p. 126).  What I like about using the embedded nature is when we are using the classroom Smart Board, I can anticipate where students will need extra resources and have these resources linked within our notes.  Since I also store our classroom set of notes on my website, students will then be able to re-read the notes online and also use the links that were embedded in the lesson for extra clarification.  Using my time off during the summer, I should be able to find a semester worth of activities.   

Jeff

Reference:

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.