GAME Plan Reflection

Instituting a technology GAME Plan for me to professionally follow has been a great idea to jump-start my thinking and planning of the incorporation of various technology learning tools when appropriate as well as helping me to realize that their are many foundational aspects of using technology that must first be taught - internet etiquette, program training, etc.

Implementing a GAME Plan prompted me to engage students academic interactions via the internet - taking something that they use normally in their personal lives and making it relevant to their learning experiences has worked out great thus far. While explaining to my students that many of our class discussions will be held via blogspot.com, I quickly learned that many of my students already had personal blogs that they used daily to talk about fashion, sports, school gossip, etc. Rather than students sighing and asking "why do we have to do this", they were eager to add an additional blog to their dashboard and begin class discussions via the web. Students who did not already have blogs were eager to start one, as they felt left out of a "cool" loop that their peers were already privy to.

Currently we are still working on one of the GAME Plan goals - digital etiquette. There has been a foundational lesson that addressed the "do's and dont's", as well as the "what if's". However, I really feel that this is an ongoing thing to practice in class, in that sometimes things are said with innocent intentions but have a hurting impact.

This course, I feel, was really optimal for my degree path as it took all the concepts and ideas from previous courses, and really made them relevant to myself as a teacher and also showed me how to incorporate all of these new ideas and tools into my daily lessons.