Carrying Out Your GAME Plan

As a reflection of my learning, I am becoming aware of how important technology is in differentiating and individualizing instruction for students.  Technology meets the needs of the different learning styles, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.  All children learn in different ways and should be provided with many choices and options in their content learning.  Providing these different choices and options to complete an assignment is not always easy for a teacher, but it makes learning more active and makes students more successful and motivated in their learning.  Dr. Ross stated that giving students more choices in projects "shows off their strengths" and that "primary instruction meets most students' needs, but some need more options" (Meeting Students' Needs with Technology, Part 1). 

Description of the resources and info. I need to carry out my action plan:  I need to continue to investigate and spend time online researching interactive technology resources that I can bring into my classroom.  I need to connect with my district technology director and those colleagues who can help me learn to use the technology resources that are available to me.  I also need to practice using these new technologies, such as podcasts, VoiceThread, interactive Webquests and online field trips, video conferencing, so that I am familar with all of their features and so I feel comfortable using them and teaching them with students. 

What steps have I been able to take so far:  I have practiced and spent time using the online technology resource of Artsonia.com to display my students' artwork online for parents and students' families to view and purchase items with their child's artwork on it.  I have successfully learned how to use the digital camera to transfer visual images of student artwork to the computer and display these images on Artsonia, which is a large children's art gallery.  I have also tried to integrate more collaborative projects in my classroom that offer the students more choices in the completion of the project.  Students may chose powerpoint or VoiceThread, or even a podcast, when creating an art history project.  I'm trying to incorporate the different learning styles into every lesson that I teach, with visuals and graphics, auditory experiences, and more tactile learning.  As far as professional development goes, I'm always on board when our district offers technology-related inservices, where I can learn more and more about technology resources.  I even want to try to attend the National Art Education Conference this summer.