Reflection

Creating my own personal GAME Plan has helped me plan, monitor, and evaluate my progress with learning how to design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments. More specifically, I have developed my own learning goals and developed a learning strategy to attain the knowledge I need to achieve my goals. I followed the specific actions of my GAME Plan and dedicated time to think about my progress. At some points during the process, I decided to add in new steps to make my plan more effective. For example, I began logging useful websites that I encountered and also tagged them on my Delicious site for future reference. Overall, the GAME Plan has helped me stay focused on becoming a more self directed learner.

A big part of my role as an educator is to continuously customize my lessons in ways that support all of my students' learning needs. My new knowledge of Universal Design guidelines(UDL) has introduced me to many technologies that support young children with physical and developmental disabilities. As a result, I feel confident that I will be able to locate resources to level the learning field for any student that enters my classroom. It is a great feeling.

In addition, I am sincerely grateful for the exposure to collaborative learning forums and tools like wikis, blogs, and digital story telling. The hands on experience has helped me understand how technology can be used to enhance content knowledge.

Finally, the course learning has inspired me to approach lesson planning with some new goals in mind. First, in accordance with UDL principles, I will provide multiple options for students to receive and share information in order to engage all types of learners. Second, I will continue to review learning goals at the start of each lesson but I will also encourage students to establish their own learning goals. Doing so will promote students to think creatively about what they want to get out of each activity making the learning broader for all, including me. Last but not least, I look forward to expanding my use of technology in the classroom beyond my Promethean board.