Monitoring My GAME Plan Progress

          This week I got further in carrying out my GAME plan, based on standard 4. d) develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital age communications and collaboration tools (International Society for Technology, 2008).  My goal was to connect with another English speaking 2nd grade class, somewhere in the world, via www.epals.com.  I set up my classroom profile and it is approved.  Next, I created 26 accounts for each of my students.  All of the emails will go in and out through my inbox.  Then, I looked through the descriptions of the registered classrooms.  I found a 2nd grade class in Spain that might be a good fit for us.  The teacher of this class wants to expose her students to other cultures, and so do I.  The children can speak Spanish and English, so communicating should not be a problem.  I sent the teacher of this class an email today, and I will await her response.  I will continue my search through all the descriptions of classrooms and their locations.  There are so many classes all around the world to connect with.    

            The next standard I was working on for my GAME plan was 1. a) promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness (International Society for Technology, 2008).  I signed up for the website http://edu.glogster.com. This website came highly recommended to me by several teaching professional, and is endorsed by Discovery Education and ISTE.  This website will enable me to set up my own multimedia poster to model for my students what they can do.  The first project I plan to do is an interactive poster about the Pilgrims and the Native Americans, back in 1620-1621, leading up to the first Thanksgiving.  Another website that also came highly recommended to me by many teachers was www.edmodo.com.  This is a network for teachers and students to connect outside of the classroom.  I signed up, started a profile, and created a group to use with my current 2nd grade class.  There seems to be so many great innovative ways to use this website.  I can create alerts to my students, assignments, a quiz, or even a poll.  I am excited about using www.edmodo.com with my students, and look forward to being better connected to all of my students.

            I would appreciate any other recommendations of resources for virtual field trips.  Scholastic.com had the exact virtual field trips I needed for a current lesson on the Pilgrims and Native Americans.  If you have certain websites that are your favorite for virtual field trips, I would love to hear about them.  

Reference List

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2