810 Personal Learning Reflection

When reflecting on my learning and growth in Teaching for Understanding with Computers, my learning can be grouped into two categories: “never do this again” and “keep this in my bag of tricks”.

Never do this again

• use Dropbox for a collaborative project when group members need to work on the project at the same time
• use a computer without proper firewall and virus software

Keep this in my bag of tricks

• list of ISTE standards for students, teachers and administration as a reference for my school’s Tech Team
• understanding and resources to create a structured plan for incorporating technology into lessons
• license my publicly shared works through creative commons

The use of technology and the structure of the course’s tasks assisted in my understanding of how the integration of technology functions “in action”. I think this was most apparent during the collaborative work with my special interest group (SIG). My group members were great and we worked very well together, however, the challenging part was finding time to collaborate and effectively utilizing Dropbox to create the collaborative document. It worked great when we were not working on the presentation at the same time; however, Dropbox is unable to allow multiple editors at the same time. I can’t even count the number of “conflicted copies” of our presentation were created. Creative problem solving and exploring other collaborative platforms is a must for future collaborative presentations.

The assignment that I felt had the most impact on applying my knowledge of integrating technology was creating the NETS-S lesson. This assignment forced me to explore, utilize, and evaluate how technology would be integrated into the lesson and for what purpose(s). For this lesson, I relied on the pedagogical information from session four to match the grade level of the students to the task to technology that would be appropriate for the task. I think that planning this lesson in relationship to the problem based learning (PBL) lesson for my school’s first graders also really made me focus on the appropriateness of the lesson in an actual school setting as well as with the possible technology limitations.

Looking back on my Personal Growth Plan, I would have to say that my goals were met during this class. My first goal was to develop ways to utilize mainstream technologies to increase the learning of my students. Although I didn’t develop specific strategies, I did gain many ideas of technology tools that I am eager to try with some of my students. My second goal was to develop an awareness of the growing technology tools available and explore ways to integrate these technologies within the classroom. I would say that this goal exceeded my expectations. My understanding of the tools available and the resources, such as TPACK, have given me a foundation on which to build future educational technology knowledge. For the future, I envision these goals to continue to be a focus for me. I also look forward to sharing my knowledge with colleagues. As we walk this road of 21st century skills, I truly believe that educators need to embody the skills themselves. I look forward to sharing my experiences from this class (and hopefully many others) so that my colleague can begin to develop the 21st century skills themselves and begin creating 21st century learners!