Week 4: Monitoring your GAME plan process

This week I am monitoring my GAME plan progress.  To begin I will refresh everyone on my goals.  My first goal is to personalize learning activities to address the diverse needs of my heritage speakers using digital tools and resources.  My second goal is to model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness through integrating new technology tools in my lessons.  For my GAME plan I am finding some of the resources I need but I am still struggling with some of my ideas. 

For my goal about heritage speakers I am reviewing their last writing prompt and STAMP assessment scores to see their areas of need when it comes to a Voice Stream project.  I have decided to move forward with this idea due to the positive response from my Walden colleagues.  On the STAMP assessment I noticed that none of my heritage speakers scored in the “advanced” category and that, as we review the data together, they do not agree that they are less than “advanced” in the speaking category.  A Voice Stream project will support their writing and will also allow them to showcase their true speaking ability.  I feel that this project will support their linguistic needs but in looking at our curriculum guide their Voice Stream project will most likely need to deal with camping, nature, or myths/legends if I want to have them complete this project during the period of this Walden class.  To me I do not feel that these topics do not lend themselves to a Voice Stream.  Of course students could record a legend but they have to write one as an assessment already and legends do not necessarily require comments.  Do any of my Walden colleagues have ideas for related topics or how I could work a Voice Stream into our current topics?  I am having a serious creative block. 

            For my second goal about modeling innovative thinking thorough modeling new technology tools I have been able to explore Voki as suggested by a Walden colleage, Zambombazo as suggested by a work colleage and the blog created by Larry Ferlazzo as suggested by a Walden colleague.  As I tried Voki it was engaging to pick a character but somehow my microphone was not working to allow me to save and upload my Voki so I will have to try again.  When I get it working I hope to upload it to my blog as practice.  I can see how this application would allow students to feel more comfortable. I also like how you can share Vokis so easily.  I plan on working with Voki more and once I have the kinks out I will definitely be modeling this and deciding if I want to pay for the yearly subscription out of my budget! 

The Zambombazo site at http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/ that was suggested to me by someone at work has a lot of great resources but they are not necessarily involving technology.  That site offers authentic songs, worksheets, comics, humor, pictures, photos, current events and more.  It is a website full of current materials and could be a good resource to use with other technology based resources.  One section I do like is called “internet” where they scan the internet for interesting or important events of the week in the Spanish speaking world.  This particular section could be a way for me to incorporate recent and inventive topics in my class or could serve as a basis for inquiry projects. 

I also looked at the blog suggested by a Walden colleague at larryferlazzo@edublogs.org.  That site is focused on teaching ELL and ESL rather than Spanish but I did find that it has good education and educational technology related posts.  My next action step is to look for more educational technology blogs that I can subscribe to so I can model additional technologies.  I would like to look for 2-3 more other applications to model for my students.  I want to be sure that I am using multiple strategies because they will benefit my students regarding the language and topic.

I have not needed to modify my action plan but I am finding it difficult to incorporate the activities at this time due to where I am in the unit as I said previously.  I am very open to input or suggestions if anyone has any!  My new questions for suggestions are “Which educational blogs are the best for new technology tools?” And “how can I incorporate Voice Stream in my current topic focus?”

There are two key realizations I have made so far in this process.  First I have learned that this GAME plan process is extremely creative in nature.  In my creative thinking process I have identified my goal, used background knowledge and brainstormed so now I am at the point of looking at alternative options and perspectives to make my final reflective judgment (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).  This makes me feel that I have made progress and I have a clear action plan for continuing to monitor and implement my plan.

I have also learned that that I need to be clearer about my strategies and choose more specific applications.  For me this is a misstep in the “action” part of my plan to meet my goals.  According to Cennamo, Ross and Ertmer (2009) it is essential to look for required resources and select strategies in the action phase of the plan and that is what I am setting out to do.  I feel I am on track to do this through my research and new thought process.  My GAME plan is shaping up nicely as I learn new technologies!

References

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.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). [Webcast]. Promoting creative thinking with technology. Baltimore: Laureate Media.