Final Reflection

Creating a game plan was similar to creating a personal professional development plan. Having a plan to refer back to and reflect on has helped keep me focused on specific goals over the last few months. Having a plan keeps instructional practices evolving in an efficient manner. Overall, following the personal game plan has fostered new learning and impacted instructional practices in a positive way.

The first part of my game plan revolved around collaborating with fellow teachers to gather materials that are aligned with curriculum changes. Using a Dropbox provided flexibility and instant gratification. All participants loved the ease of use and ability to collaborate whenever it was convenient for each individual. Moving forward, it will be important to make sure that the Dropbox account does not become a dumping ground for everything. The account needs to stay organized and streamlined to fit the new curriculum changes within the district, including common core alignment. Now that there is a specific group of teachers collaborating on the assignment, it will also be helpful to ask administration for a common prep or time during faculty meetings to collaborate further and discuss materials.

After collaborating with colleagues, my instructional practices have been directly impacted. Websites have been shared as well as teacher-made materials. Being that state testing will also be changing, I found it extremely useful to reference a document one teacher created that highlighted the new skills being addressed. Sharing resources has helped free up time for other important duties such as planning and creating other problem-based activities.

Using Dropbox has been a success. However, I would probably not open this tool up to a class activity. It may be useful for students to create individually, but other digital tools such as wikis and blogs would be more beneficial for students to collaborate with. Other digital tools can be monitored much more easily. The Dropbox account is acceptable to share among peers who understand internet norms and privacy morals. Young students who are just learning the importance of these topics need more monitoring and scaffolding.

Moving forward, I will make sure that I use problem-based learning as often as possible. Designing lessons that allow students to collaborate and make their own accurate meaning from the material is very important. Also, the ISTE has shown the importance of implementing and using digital tools appropriately. Today’s students need to know how to use technology appropriately, and the ISTE gives teachers a comprehensive list of skills to address. Finally, using social networking appropriately is something I will try to do with students more often. Familiarizing students with these skills can only benefit them moving forward. Overall, I found the  resources and classroom practices discussed very useful to today’s school settings.