One of the biggest things I have learned this semester is that the generation I teach, and will be teaching for years to come, is continually changing in their learning habits. It takes more than just a lecture to engage a student in the 21st century and it also takes more than that for me, as a high school teacher, to stay interested in teaching my subject matter. As my graduate course CEP 810 culminates, I wish to reflect on what I learned that will help me to incorporate “more” into my lessons.
During the sessions, I have discovered many effective teaching strategies that are being employed in school districts around the world. The focus of these strategies is how to successfully integrate technology into lessons. A memorable video from Edutopia called “A Commitment to High Tech Education”, featured many classes that used technology and lessons daily, such as clickers, GPS, heart-rate monitors, laptops, etc. What also stood out from this school was that sports teams, clubs and classes intertwined their lessons together. Not only does this allow students to collaboratively use the tools that they learn best with, but they are also able to learn about information in a way that interests them. Other helpful aspects of our course that demonstrated effective teaching strategies were our SIG projects, the MACUL network, and our Angel discussion board. My classmates and I discussed lesson plans, tips, and tricks to new technology that are easily incorporated in any classroom. Many of these include using videos, cell phones, wikis, blogs, and, of course, cloud computing in classes, whether in school or at home.
As mentioned in my Personal Growth Plan, before this class I thought about classroom technology as interactive white boards, graphing calculators, clickers, online textbooks and other electronic devices. However, when reflecting on the strategies mentioned above (videos/screen casting, wikis, blogs, cloud computing), the Internet played a major role in many of them. They are not necessarily a piece of equipment. The greatest thing about teachers and students using the World Wide Web for technology incorporation is that it is easily accessible and mostly free. Most students have access to the Internet at home but also have the ability to use it at school before school, during lunch, or after school. The Internet can save a lot of money for schools that can purchase technology tools but can also enable lower-budget schools to use certain online technologies at little or no cost.
During my course, I have read articles, browsed websites, and watched many videos and tutorials to help me create assignments demonstrate technology that can be used in my own classroom. I have a few that I am particularly proud of: my blog, my RSS page, SIG presentation, and my Personal Technology Plan. I plan on turning my blog into a Math blog for my classes and allow students to solve problems on, discuss assignments, and ask questions. My RSS page is something new to me and it is very cool to have a collection of educational (and other) blogs and sites that are continuously updating that I can browse for advice and ideas. I had a great experience presenting video lessons with my group in our SIG project. We worked well together and I am proud of what we accomplished. I feel 100% more comfortable with utilizing videos in lessons, projects, for at-home use, screen casting, etc. Lastly, I was very excited to learn about the presentation application Prezi that I created my Personal Technology Plan with. To me, it is the new Powerpoint with engaging features that allowed me to properly reflect on my plan for technology integration in my classroom.
When re-reading my Personal Growth Plan from the beginning of the course, the last sentence proved to be of worth, because I did indeed learn a wealth of knowledge since this assignment and started thinking of ways to incorporate these ideas in my classes. I think at the time of my Personal Growth Plan creation, I had the idea that I would be able to incorporate technology immediately in my classroom as the course progressed. However, by taking two online courses, working full-time, and coaching, I have not had the time needed to successfully include technology everywhere I want to. I think my previous goals mentioned in my plan and above in my reflection are still valid and I intend to meet them. I will bookmark all websites I learned about to my Diigo account and save all my files for future use.
