How I will use the GAME PLAN in my classroom...

I have really enjoyed organizing my goals for using technology into a GAME PLAN. It is an efficient, sensible way to be sure that you can stay on track with what you hope to accomplish. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when implementing technology. As I have mentioned before, I often struggle with where to start and how to get going. Having a GAME PLAN helped me tackle these issues. I especially liked the fact that I was forced to record how I would monitor my game plan. It is realistic in the sense that it is hard to stay on track with goals that have been set. The "evaluate" portion reminded me of how important it is to evaluate my own work. As an educator, I spend so much time evaluating others but it is equally as important to evaluate myself, especially when reflecting on whether or not I have met goals.

"As a nation, we want our students to be good thinkers, and we want our schools to teach thinking" (Cennamo, 2009, p.23). I feel that using the Game Plan in our classrooms will help our students to think. They need to learn how to set goals and monitor themselves so that they can reach those goals. We live in times when young people expect things to happen instantly and when they don't, they often don't know how to problem solve. If they knew how to use and implement a GAME PLAN, they would understand the importance of problem solving.

I have some tweaking to do when it comes to using this in my first grade classroom but I know that it can be done. I think the ideas and concepts of the game plan can be present in my room without the students writing out their own. It is never to early for them to learn how to set goals for themselves and evaluate the work that they have done.

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