This class is coming to an end. But the journey to earn my Masters has just begun. How has this class changed my practices? How has it changed me? This adventure has shown me how much I know and also shown me how much I have to learn. We began our class simply with discussion posts and an introduction to Google drive. As a class we helped each other and laughed at our struggles. Piece by piece, week by week, all became more tech savvy. In our final weeks, I presented a digital photostory that stirred emotions and finally a webquest that knock the socks off my administrators! What a long way we have come. Overall, I learned a lot of tricks and tips, but most importantly I learned to take chances and collaborate with my peers.
The courses objectives set a framework for us to follow. I would like to take this chance to reflect upon those objectives and all the amazing skills I learned along the way.
1. Learn ways to promote student reflection using collaborative tools
to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding
In EDU 533, we learned how to use Google Forms to create polls and collect student feedback. The use of a myriad of Google products, such as drive, blogger, and sites allow me as a teacher to be able to quickly and effectively administer information and get feedback from my students. During my field experience, I learn how to use the poll everywhere site to collect feedback from cell phones instantaneously. I find that I have many new ways to collect feedback and deal with it in a timely and effective way.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices
related to digital information and technology
The safety of my students is always at the forefront of my mind. I want them to be able to use the internet and technology effectively while keeping themselves safe. As both a mother and a teacher, I understand that having the world at your fingertips can be both glorious and dangerous. We spent a week learning about COPPA, CIPA, and FERPA. It is important to keep our students private information safe and even though I teach kids that are over 13, I must make sure that they are not posting to sites that could cause them to be exposed to any danger. It is also important to teach my students about the importance of citing sources and being a good digital citizen when using other's work. My favorite tool for this was the cite function in Google research!! The kids loved it and got right to work being better digital citizens.
3. Illustrate through application how state and national standards
are implemented within the curriculum
(e.g., Common Core, NH Curriculum Frameworks, ISTE
(NETS-Teacher/NETS-Student) and NH-ICT Literacy Standards for K-12 Students (Ed 306.42))
Before this class I was unaware that both students and teachers had technology standards. By the week of our lesson plans, I was able to identify and implement these standards for my students. We also learned how and where to access all the state standards and the Common Core standards. Many of the NETS are things that we are looking for from our students anyway. The only trick is to integrate technology in a meaningful way. I did this in my zoology class with a comic strip. The students had to take a project that we have done in the past but this time it had to be presented in Pixton, a digital comic maker. This allowed them to show their ideas and creativity all while also demonstrating their proficiency with technology.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the use of assistive and adaptive technologies and other digital
resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student
There are so many ways to help students reach their academic needs and goals and to tailor the experience to their individual needs. We learned about fun websites that allow the students to progress at their own pace and to skip ahead if they have shown proficiency. The most useful tool that I learned about during the course of this class is newsela.com. This website allows students to pick their lexile level and read the content at a level that is accessible to them. Each article is available in five level and the supplementary quiz is also given at the students own lexile level. It has been a great tool in my marine biology class where i have a huge range of abilities.
5. Evaluate and reflect on emerging tools and trends
by reviewing current research and professional literature
This class used a wonderful book (The Connected Educator) that gave a plethora of great ideas and tips. We also read from recent journals that discussed the use of technology and how to make its integration successful. It was during our literature review assignment that I came up with the idea to create my webquest for our annual aquarium field trip. The article I read used technology to expand the learning environment from the classroom to a farm all while keeping the students engaged and excited. This idea turned out to be the catalyst for my aquarium adventure that had the administrators in my school looking around in awe. They were shocked at the level of engagement and excitement in my students. I could not have asked for better results.
6. Turn theory into practice by completing 5 hours of related field experience
During my five hours, I worked closely with a health teacher in my building. This was a great experience and helped me to recognize that I was already incorporating quite a bit of technology into my lesson. The teacher I worked with had some new tricks and fun websites that I have started using in my classroom. It was great to see how KS used many different types of technology to stretch the students experience and allow them to create projects that they were proud of.
Part 2
Now...... What do we do with all this technology? And why is it so important that we teach our students how to use it?
The answer is easy and complex. It is absolutely imperative that our students leave school with the skills and confidence to take on technology and use it effectively. In the future, it will not be a luxury or a skill that is nice to have. Their marketability and ability to get a job will hinge on their level of computer literacy. Today there are still jobs that people can skate by with little to know technological skills, but in the very near future this will not be true. Today's students will enter a job search with other students and be competing on a global level. Our kids will no longer be bound by where they live. So many companies are hiring people thousands of miles away because it is not necessary to be in the same location. Our kids will be up against the best and the brightest. The ability to be able to use technology effectively will make the difference in their futures. Just as the skills that our mothers and fathers learned helped them earn their positions. But they did not grow up in a world saturated with technology.
It is a wonderful notion that all of our students will leave our hands being computer and technologically literate but there are some road blocks to this. There a socioeconomic factors that hold back some of our students. Home internet is not a luxury that everyone can afford. Many of my students are overwhelmed by the amount of work that requires technology at home. When kids are going home to a house that is without power, how can we expect them to be able to access the internet? As teachers, it is our duty to give them as much exposure as we can at school and help assist them if access to technology is limited at home. There are some programs that give internet to low income families. And sometimes a simple flash drive can solve some of our students problems.
Sometimes it is not only at home that technology can be challenging and difficult to access. Some schools have limited number of student computer and those that are available are slow and difficult to use. It is important to ask for and advocate for our students. Sometimes if we just ask the right people the right questions, there are ways around problems. A department leader or administrator might not know or understand what we need in our particular classrooms. It is our job to ask for what we need. There are things that are beyond our control; the internet goes down, all 24 laptops decide to update in the middle of class, computers are not available. But with a little extra planning and asking the right questions, a lot of our technological issues can be overcome.
It is critical that the students of today become successful technologically literate adults of tomorrow. And it is our duty as teachers to help them get there. To push them beyond what is comfortable and challenge them to reach new levels of success.
