Course Reflection

After working on my GAME plan for the last few weeks I feel that it was a very worthwhile endeavor. Even though I have used these lessons in my class before this year, I took what I learned through this course and improved the lessons greatly. I focused my GAME plan lesson around one piece of ext called Killer Angels. This novel deals with multiple narrative sides occurring during the Civil War. I liked using this novel because there are lots of resources, especially technological, that are available online. Overall, I feel like my GAME plan was a great success.

The most interesting thing that I learned during the course of creating my GAME plan was digital story telling. While I had never heard the term before I had used aspects of it in my classroom. I like thinking that in the future I will now have another resource to use in my classroom to gain student interest, improve motivation, and prepare students for work and college. I also really liked how I incorporated digital story telling into my GAME plan. By having the students create videos instead of simply participating in a normal debate it gives them the opportunity to learn the core curriculum and other things like video editing and online research skills. I enjoy how technology can bridge the gap between the common core and aspect of the work place or college! An immediate adjustment to my instructional strategy has occurred while taking classes here at Walden. I understand now that I cannot simple stick to what is comfortable for me when it comes to technology. I have to stay up-to-date and as current as possible to keep my students interested in learning. I will incorporate digital storytelling and other technology immediately.

One other aspect of this course that I feel was very information was social media/networking and its uses in the classroom. I did very little in the past with this form of technology, mainly because I am not familiar with it. My school does not allow teachers to be on Facebook or Myspace, and I have never tweeted in my life. I enjoyed working with my blog space and wiki site. I will be using this technology with my students in the future. I have used blogs in the past, but I feel much more comfortable now after working with them during this course. Overall, this course was very informative and gave me many great resources to implement in my classroom.