Saturday, February 27, 2010

Reflection

As I am wrapping up my first technology class for my Master’s degree I look back on the last eight weeks with a bit of surprise. I have always been relatively technologically savvy. When I was applying for my master’s program and saw the course work I did not think it looked very hard. In fact I remember telling a friend “one class is about how to do a blog. How hard can that be?” Oh how foolish a statement. This class proved to be a challenge for me, pushing me into a realm of technology I had never explored before. I feel pretty comfortable now using some of the web 2.0 technologies- namely blogging and wikis. I mean, here I am posting on my own blog! And making a wiki page was a lot of fun and very satisfying. In fact I have gone to my group wiki page several times and even used some of the links we posted. In these ways I feel satisfied that I have really developed a whole new set of skills that I otherwise would never have even thought about.

Everything that I have learned has put my brain on a sort of information overload. I am one of those people that need to sit on information, and mull it over before it really all sinks in. I believe the best way for me to expand my knowledge of integrating technology to increase my students achievement is to use and practice all of these new technologies myself. I believe the more I use them and become comfortable with them the more ideas I will get about how to utilize them in the classroom. If I let my knowledge and new found skills go cold I will no doubt lose them and never be able to fully implement their use in the classroom. While taking this course I did find my Achilles heel of technology – the podcast. I had a lot of fun recording the podcast, and my students had a lot of fun being in it. In fact, for a couple of them, just recording got them to speak in complete sentences and practice good English. My problem was in the uploading and production. As it turns out my sound bites were saved in the wrong format, and to be candid led to a total meltdown on my part. In a small way I am glad for it because I will have a level of empathy with my students if they struggle with technology in the classroom. I know I am going to need to try a podcast again soon and get over the hurdle I encountered or I am never going to use it in my classroom, and that would be a shame.

A second way to expand my knowledge of technology is to continue to familiarize myself with the skills of 21st century learning. I have a grasp on those skills needed but I feel as though I need to continue to reference these skills- possibly through the 21st century skills website, and find ways to purposefully include skills such as: critical thinking, problems solving, communication, teamwork/collaboration, creativity, self direction, and social responsibility into my teaching. Making a conscious effort to teach my students these skills will help to equip them for life.

One goal I have for transforming my classroom is to incorporate the lessons and projects I created in my class. One of those projects is a classroom blog page. In one of my first blogs I talked about how I can make a classroom blog and my goal now is to start it. I also came up with two classroom wiki projects. One of the projects is to have a question wiki where my students can post the many questions they have about how things work, and animals, and well, about everything. My goal is to have parents, fellow teachers, and fellow students answer the questions posed by my students. My second wiki project is one to develop an essential skill in my students and will involve them working together to create pages on the letters of the alphabet and add words and pictures that begin with each letter. Accomplishing this goal will require me to dive in and get started. I will have to set aside time to create the blog and wiki pages and then carve out time every day to incorporate these projects.

A more important goal and perhaps a goal that will take some time to fully incorporate is to begin to shift my way of teaching from directing what they learn into facilitating what they learn. I want my mindset to be “how can students use technology to create their own learning?” and then work to create activities that accommodate this type of student centered learning (Laureate, 2008). Since my goal as a teacher is to create effective members of society and the workforce, I also feel it important to teach media literacy along with information literacy by bringing the media into the classroom. Instead of the teacher being the only source of knowledge, I need to teach students how to find and interpret the information that is so easily located on the internet. I need to model for students how to discern what kind of information is accurate as well as teach them how to contribute accurate information to the web (Laureate, 2008). This goal might prove to be more difficult because of the expectation of my district to be a teacher that directs learning. I do believe that if I continue to use technology, remind myself of the skills my students will need, and begin to incorporate some of the web 2.0 technologies that I have learned over these last eight weeks, in time I will be able to make this shift into student created learning.

Laureate, Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). The changing role of the classroom teacher: Part 1: Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society [DVD]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate, Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). The changing role of the classroom teacher: Part 2: Understanding the impact of technology on education, work, and society [DVD]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

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