Reflection
This course has helped me to develop my own technology skills and use them in my classroom. There were so many things of which I was not even aware before this course. I had never participated in a wiki or podcast before; in fact, I did not even know what they were. There were so many ideas in this course that I have not even had time to use them all, yet. This course has inspired me to continue to search the web for new ideas that I can use in my classroom. I will continue to do project based learning segments using technology to achieve my goals.
My view of the learning process has changed to include the teacher as a facilitator rather than a lecturer. I now see the student as being responsible for his own learning. My knowledge of the teaching and learning process has been deepened by a new view of this relationship. I now see myself as someone to aid the students as they learn and discover things on their own, even if I could teach them. I have learned to give up the control of my classroom in the sense that I allow students to explore for the answers instead of controlling completely the direction the class will go. I keep the students on target with our state standards, but they can all be a part of a learning, collaborative group working together to discover and learn.
My perspective has become more learner centered. This has been a little difficult for me. I was always the kind of teacher who had the whole year planned out before the first day of school. This year, I only planned a few project ideas. I involved students in the state standards and let them choose what we would study first. I modeled what a project would look like for the first few projects. Then, I allowed students to develop ideas and plan their own activity. I think I will become better and better at this as time goes on. I even think I may be able to plan more but with loose flexibility as the students direct the learning a bit more.
I will continue to expand my knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement by my continued searching for internet ideas. I do not want to limit my technology experiences to the computer. I also want to explore ideas with ipods, phones, and the like. I have thought of having the students created a rap song to teach some math truth. Then we could record it to a podcast, and allow students to download it to their mp3 players.
In the long term, I have proposed a plan to my principal to teach a class on technology at my school. I want to have students design things and find things to help teachers. I want them to create a website to which they will post what they have found. I would like to see the teachers have the RSS feeds for the site so they can keep up with new posts without having to check it all the time. I may face some resistance from teachers in this area.
I also want to have my class go paperless. This will be an adjustment for me. I have put a few things in place to move that direction and have resolved to take baby steps to get to my goal. No one in my school runs a paperless classroom. I want to be successful and encourage other teachers to also go paperless.
As I look through my checklist, most of the things I should be doing, I am doing. A few of the items moved from the sometimes column, to the often column during this course. I think the things I need to work on come mostly from the colleague section, not the student section of the checklist. I need to try to push more for technology literacy. I want to seek out teachers who are willing to advance in that area with me. I have attempted to start a teacher blog with the teachers in my school. This has been completely unsuccessful. Not one teacher commented on the blog, even after several email reminders. I overestimated teachers’ excitement about participating in technology collaboration. However, I am not discouraged. I have now sent an email asking teachers to please email me any addresses and ideas that have been successful for them on the internet, and which they think other teachers might be interested in using. The teachers in my school tend to email quite a bit, so I expect a better response. I will email out the ideas I receive as well as post those ideas to my blog. In the event that this does not work, I plan to talk to teachers one on one about things that have worked for them, and then post those ideas. I realize that some teachers may not use the computer with students at all, and they may not have ideas to share. However, having a resource they can look at for ideas may increase their comfort level and encourage them to use technology in their classrooms.
Walden University M.S. in Education Program, specialization: Integrating
