5364+Reflections

Respond in the expandable boxes below. Remember to copy and paste your responses to your wiki. 1. What outcomes had you envisioned for this course? Did you achieve those outcomes? Did the actual course outcomes align with those that you envisioned?  When I found out that the course I was enrolled in was EDLD 5364: Teaching with Technology, I envisioned a course built on the idea of cooperative learning with readings, learning theories, and videos demonstrating how to incorporate technology into a perfect classroom devoid of special needs students and other barriers. I imagined the class would be taught using the books we were instructed to buy, and we would conduct class in the traditional delivery method with our assessment being a mid-term and a final. That was my initial reaction after taking several courses with similar titles throughout the last five years as a tech specialist. As soon as I opened my course materials, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the course went above and beyond my expectations. Yes, this course did demonstrate key learning theories, readings and video related to teaching with technology, with an emphasis on project-based, cooperative learning like I had expected. The key difference that I believe made all the difference to the course, was actually applying it to a problem-based scenario and solving that problem with a group in a method very much like what the students go through in a project-based learning assignment. Using the Google shared docs, and sites taught me how to incorporate important web 2.0 techniques in a seamless way. Actually going through the process let me see how easy it is to integrate web 2.0 concepts that we have been learning about. The UDL Cast site and Book Builder are valuable resources to accommodate special needs learners using technology. All of the resources provided through Edutopia.com, and the readings are all excellent sources for me to reference to when teachers ask me about best practices for teaching with technology. All in all, this course exceeded my expectations.     2. To the extent that you achived the outcomes, are they still relevant to the work that you do in your school? Why or why not?  The topics in EDLD 5364: Teaching with Technology are relevant and necessary to my position as a 5th grade science teacher. Science students in fifth grade have to learn to think critically, as well as problem solve. The best approach to this is through a project based, Constructivist approach, which was taught in EDLD 5364 through the group project assignment. This teaches students to mimic what actual scientists, and collaborative groups do to solve major, challenging problems in the real world. The group project in EDLD 5364 was an excellent example as to the way this group approach can work online with a group of students. For years I have been struggling with the best way to do group work. Teaching students to save to the server at our campus is tedious and time consuming. Our school runs on Macs,so the student would start a project at school, but not be able to complete it at home, due to the platform change, or version issues between programs. Using Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, blogs, and online collaboration sites such as Google answers all my problems! I can teach the students valuable collaboration skills without the frustrations of group work between platforms, and programs. This class was instrumental in helping me over a major hurdle in teaching with technology, that I can begin using immediately with my classes.   3. What outcomes did you not achieve? What prevented you from achieving them? <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Every outcome I had hoped to achieve in the course EDLD 5364 was achieved. My main hope was to learn more about collaboration online and that was achieved through the group assignment. One of the other outcomes I had been looking forward to learning about were technology theories to justify using technology in instruction. Several case studies were shown, as well as a few videos, but I felt the class could have gone more in depth in this area. I was excited to learn about the two new theories, Cyborg and Connectivism. This was the first time I had heard of these two theories, and they seemed to fill in the holes to the Constructivist theory that I was already aware of. I feel that both of these theories showed where technology was going in the future. Connectivism showed where technology in the classroom was headed, as far as what students would need to learn on the curriculum side. Cyborg theory showed where technology was headed with mankind. Learning more about these theories would help fill in gaps in my own teaching. It is hard sometimes to justify teaching a certain way to administration without theory and studies backing it up. This is especially true when teaching a TAKS grade such as 5th grade science. When I can show administration justification behind my methods, they seem to relax and trust my judgement. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">4. Were you successful in completing the course assignments? If not, what prevented or discouraged you? <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">The assignments presented in this course were exciting, because I felt as if I were a student being given a project-based assignment in a classroom. I went throught the same frustrations that I see the students go through, mainly time constraints found in every class. This factor can contribute to being successful or not with a group project, due to the complete picture that is painted in the completed project. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">I feel that our completed project was good, but due to time constraints with the holidays, jobs and personal life, it wasn’t as good as it could have been. If we would have had more time to meet, we could have added more graphics and resources to the site to have made it even better. With more picture examples on all the pages and more examples of the final PSA in different formats, I feel that the site would have been a more complete resource for the teacher and students. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">5. What did you learn from this course: about yourself, your technology and leadership skills, and your attitudes? <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Since I had been a tech specialist for a number of years, I always felt that I had a pretty good grasp on how to teach with technology in the classroom. No matter how much I would learn about technology though, it was never enough. Every day technology is advancing and it is up to me to keep up with the latest trends and resources and to try to apply these technological advances to the classroom. I feel that I had not done this with online collaborative tools, such as Google docs and sites. I had dabbled in them in the past, playing with Power Point and storing a few documents, even uploading a few videos to YouTube, but really I did not do my research to see how these resources fit in to the whole picture. Now that I see the power these resources put in the hands of teachers and students, I am going to harness them for my own use in the classroom, and with my colleagues- both vertically and horizontally within my district. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">
 * <span style="color: #be151d; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Course Reflection Prompts **