Reflection

Reflection: Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society.

In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills as a professional teacher?

During this course, I learned how to create and use blogs, wikis and podcasts. Learning to create a blog and then subscribe to my classmates blogs and read them through an RSS readers was new to me and certainly a cool way to quickly access information. The ease of using blogs has helped me with demonstrating how I can use them in my web design course starting next semester.

Using the wiki as a group assignment was new as well. I can certainly use this concept in my web design course by grouping my students and providing them prompts that they will have to address through a wiki site. I foresee great use with this technology resource, and will be a great collaborative environment for my students.

In what ways have you deepened your knowledge of the teaching and learning process?

I have gained new knowledge about how impactful technology can be on students and teachers. Using technology as a teaching and learning tool will bring my students up to date with some of the latest trends in technology and how certain technology can be used in the classroom and in the outside world. I believe that by staying current with technology and using when appropriate for classroom instruction will help me deliver 21^st-century skills to my students.

In what ways have you changed your perspective from being teacher-centered to learner-centered?

I do not really think that I was ever a teacher-centered professional. I have always taught in a lab environment where I model assignments and concepts, and then group my students and allow them to work at a comfortable pace to finish their tasks. I monitor my classes and offer suggestions, feedback, comments, etc. while they are working on their projects. I feel that my classroom environment is already a learner-centered one and will continue to be one. With the use of technology and providing group projects, my students will benefit from each other, learn to work as teams, and develop better social skills that will help them in the working world.

In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement?

Getting the necessary training and staff development on different technologies and how to implement them into classroom instruction will help me teach the technology to my students. By using digital resources and interactive technology, student achievement should increase in the classroom. Having my students research, explore, find new and creative ways to accomplish task by using technology will hopefully broaden their experiences and keep them more engaged with using technology.

I am going to set two long term goals that will help to ensure that I am meeting the needs of my students with using 21^st-century skills. One goal is to write a grant to get at least 12 macbook pro laptops for my video production lab. Our district has an exclusive contract with IBM, and unfortunately, for my lab environment, the IBM machines simply can not handle the work load and speed that a macbook pro can handle when working with video files. This will be difficult to overcome, because some teachers in my district have tried this in the past and were not successful. Another goal I am going to tackle and hope to accomplish, is to have in place a permanent monitoring system such as NetSupport for my lab. We have had this in the past, but the district removed the software. By having the software in place, I will be able to control and monitor all the student workstations to maximize efficient use of class time and instruction. Funding always seems to be the issue when trying to get these things in place, but hopefully I can find a way to get it back in my lab. 

My first podcast!

I created a podcast about students use of technology and recored a sampling of their responses.
This is the site location:

http://podcastmachine.com/podcasts/7466/episodes/35091

Partnership for 21st Century Skills website

Wow, I never knew that this site : http://www.p21.org existed. I have spent some time on the site reading through articles. I found one on executives stating that the 21st Century requires more skilled workers. These skills require the workers to not only know the three R's, but they need to be better prepared in the area of the four C's: critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation. These skills will become more important to business and organizations in the near future and our students need to learn these skills in order to be successful when leaving school.

I know that it is important to have these skills, however, I did not know that we are lacking in general with preparing our students with the four C's. According to the findings from the AMA, organizations will be requiring their workforce to be proficient with the four C's as part of their employees training and development. So, we as educators must start now, if we haven't already, with preparing our students with these necessary skills.

The website, P21.org, has many useful articles to read through that can give any educator a better understanding as to why it is important to prepare our students for the 21st Century. After looking at the Framework graphic, I have to disagree with the percentage that life and career skills is given. I know that the other three areas are important in order to be successful, but learning life and career skills is enormously important for everyone. You can be the smartest, brightest, etc, but if you do not possess life skills, then your are stuck in the mud, so to say.

As an educator, I can see where this site can have an impact on my students and how they view the 21st century skills that they will need to be successful.

Blogging in my classroom

I teach a high school web design and development course to 10th through 12th grade students that I do believe would have good use for a blog site to help them with the course. I could set one up for my students to share html code ideas and tips. They could share design concepts and scripting language ideas. When I get into flash, they could post links to helpful websites and share their flash work and how they accomplished them. I think this would not only benefit the students in my class, but I believe that I would learn a lot more about the course I teach, and stay on top of the current technology trends in our society. I think that a class blog site would allow me to see how talented my students are and where they may or may not be struggling in class. I know that some students will always do the minimum in class, and there are those who go above and beyond my expectations. Having them interact with each other through a blog might motivate the unmotivated to be more creative and produce better quality work! Using a blog that they could access from home would allow them to show their parents the concepts and projects that they are working, stay on top of things if they missed class, and share new fun ways to do things that they might discover outside of the classroom.

Technology in the classroom

With the ever changing technology that can be incorporated into the classroom, I think that we, as educators, are moving towards a paperless environment and that textbooks will be replaced by e-books. Students will have access to their work from their home computers in addition to their access at school. Students will start using social networking sites, blogs, and chat rooms more frequently and use them as a resource tool in their studies and assignments. Texting, smart phones, iPads, etc. will be more useful in the classroom providing that they are used for educational purposes. All this technology can be overwhelming to the veteran teachers who prefer the textbooks and not so much the technology. Training these educators on how to use this technology is critical if the students are going to benefit from its use in all classrooms.