CEP 812 Reflect

Throughout this course, I have definitely improved and grown in my familiarity with technology. Becoming aware of UDL principles and implementing them in my lessons, has really helped my teaching. I have begun to see the daily practicality and have even brought it up in my PLC's at school. My skills with webquests have also grown, looking back at the first one I created years ago, the sophistication and understanding of the process has certainly improved. I would still like to work on incoporating these technologies on a daily basis in the classroom. I am able to create great resources, but do not do it on a regular basis. I would like to utilize my classroom blogs more and have students completing blogs on a weekly basis or even for homework. The biggest challenge is always finding the time to create resources and to allow students to spend the time necessary for a good blog post.

I think being a teacher in the classroom both helped and hurt this process. As I had anticipated, a first year teacher is extremely busy and ideally I would have liked to spend more time internalizing the material and making more resources to use with my students. However, also being the classroom it gave me great perspective and a purpose for instruction. I knew where my students were and their needs, as well as the instant application of material. I hope to continue to take the time and put together online resources for my students using the UDL principles and evaluating the online resources I find.

Technology seems as though it can play the role of another teacher in the classroom. In 4th grade, I have 52 students and no assistant. I would love to use more technology to be able to teach my students while I am working in small groups. This will allow for greater differentiation between my readiness levels and my classes. One example of this, is next Wednesday I will have a sub in my room, so I hope to create a voicethread to explain everything to my students and minimize theirs or the sub's confusion. Another effective strategy is to use it as the product of their learning. For example, my students are completing a project on holidays around the world and they are using research, a social bookmarking for acceptable sites, google maps, wallwisher, and blogs to express what they have learned. We also created a voicethread with our visualizations of The Night Before Christmas, and each student recorded their part. Technology can be so effective in allowing you to differentiate and to instruct, while giving students the practice of independent learning.

As I gain familiarity with web-based technologies, it becomes increasingly easier to implement them. For example, I remember the first website that I created, years ago and the time it took me to be able to format and embed various resources. Now, I have about 10 websites and 5 blogs that I maintain. In creating the StAIR, I saw the need for a Georges Melies website that was conducive to student learning, so I created one. The same has occurred with blog formats, voicethread, and prezi. I struggle with some other resources, but I know the more I use them, the more familiar I will become and will be able to effectively use them on a regular basis.

My personal goals were to be able to feel comfortable using more technology and using it more effectively in my lessons. Now that we have mobile labs at my school, I really do feel I have met my goal. I think that this class not only introduced me to a couple resources I was not aware of, such as MERLOT, and I have learned to use them in a practical way. Although I feel I had a large amount of background knowledge in technology, I was able to push myself further to be able to meet my goal and get a lot out of the class.

Now my goal is to continue to explore and proceed with my Masters. I hope to continue to explore web 2.0 and increase my familiarity and comfort in using a larger variety of tools. However, I have also realized through this course that it is not the amount of resources, but rather the quality within them. If my students are not using a tool well, or I am not using a tool well, then there is no reason to keep adding technologies on before others are completed. I have had a problem with just moving my students on through project with technology, and not allowing them to truly explore and make it their own. I have done a much better job with that during the most recent holiday project. My plan is to create more tools and familiarize myself with more resources to get to the comfort level of using and integrating them into my classroom more regularly. Long-term, I would love to provide professional development on technology or teach online courses about technology to help bring teachers into the 21st century. I have already presented on tools I am using in my classroom at a staff meeting, but would continue to explore. It would be nice to have a course on the ipad and app tool associated with that. Those apps could be a session in this online course, to help teachers better use and understand the prospects of the ipad.