Final Post: Reflection

Photo credit to ghs 1963 photos on Flickr

Throughout my experience in Introduction to Technology for Educator, I learned a lot more than I thought I would in the beginning. Before beginning this course, I had no idea of the many different tools and resources that I would learn in such a short amount of time. Every assignment that I completed has taught me something new and enhanced some of my previous knowledge. Despite this class being a mini-semester and only six weeks, I am proud of how well I worked through all of the assignments and stayed on track.

The main resource in any class is the textbook. Our textbook, Transforming Learning with New Technologies, was probably the most effective textbooks that I have used since beginning my college career. Every concept and idea within our textbook was explained in full detail and really helped me understand all of them. There were also many different technologies and techniques explained within the textbook that gave me inspiration for my future classrooms.

As I mentioned previously, all of the assignments in this class taught me something new and built upon previous knowledge. The assignments that I really enjoyed were the group collaboration assignments (Instructional Strategies Wiki). Because this was an online class, we never got the chance to get to know each other. Through the group project assignments, our groups got to somewhat know each other in a short period of time and create awesome projects!

Another assignment that I really enjoyed working on was the Teacher ePortfolio. I decided to use Weebly for my portfolio and I was surprised at how simple it was to use. This assignment gave me the opportunity to think in the mind of a teacher and present myself how I want my students and their parents to see me. It also gave me an opportunity to see all of the work that I completed throughout these past six weeks.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this course and I will take a lot away from this course. I can not wait to implement many of the techniques and tools into my future classroom I just passed my General Knowledge Test and am waiting to hear from the Bachelor’s program. I am now more excited than ever to begin my career as an educator!

References

Calabrese, Adele. (2016, June 20). Teacher ePortfolio. Created with Weebly. Retrieved on June 21, 2016, from http://adelecalabreseeme.weebly.com/ 

ghs 1963 photos. (2013, June 11). Teacher's apple. Retrieved on June 21, 2016, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ghs1963/9029843134/in/album-72157634096357524/ 

Instructional Strategies Wiki. (2016). Retrieved on June 21, 2016, from https://eme2040sua16online03.wikispaces.com/ 

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter 4, 7 and/or 9: Blog Post #E

The first topic that stood out to me in these three chapters was the idea of learning or education assessments. These assessments are described as documenting in measurable terms how much students have learned a topic or skill. However, in schools today, the administrations and teachers are more focused on students just knowing the material than truly understanding it. This is not necessarily their fault though. States have ridiculous mandates and learning outcomes for each grade level that students do not have the time to fully understand a concept. There is so much work that students are thrown the information and are tested on it before they have the chance to comprehend the concepts. One act that was signed into law that really began this whole assessment process was the No Child Left Behind Act. An article entitled, NCLB: Is it Working?, compares test scores from the 1970's and 1980's, before NCLB, to test scores from 1998 to 2007, right before and after NCLB. What it has seen is that the strategy used in the NCLB Act does not work. Daniel Kortez, a professor at Harvard University states that students now are just being taught a new test rather than make real academic achievements.

The second topic that stood out to me was the idea of understanding by design or backwards design. The educational curriculum works in the reverse of how most educators set up lesson plans. First starting with the goals or outcomes for the students then going backwards to choosing the method of instruction and how students will achieve this. I believe this is a very ingenious model to use when making lesson plans. This concept, I believe focusing on a better understanding and processing of the information for students. This can be tied into the learning assessment that I discussed before. I believe that this is the type of method that should be used when preparing for learning assessments. When administrators and teachers have the assessment as the end goal then figuring out how students will get to the end goal will achieve greater success.

The last topic that stood out to me was the idea of multimodal learning. This is essentially an individual's best learning styles. After I did some research, I found a website called VARK. This website, gives people a questionnaire to figure out what their best learning style is.  After what which learning style or learning styles are best suited for you, the website has an individual web page to describe each learning style (through the link provided, you will be brought to a page where there are hyperlinks to each page). I took this questionnaire and was given the following scores:

Visual 5

Aural 4

Read/Write 7

Kinesthetic 4

Based on the questionnaire, I was told that my preferred style of learning is to read and write information. This was spot on for how I like to learn and study.. For students to know what their preferred learning style is can make the biggest difference between an A or a B. 

Photo credit to GotCredit from Flickr

References:

Calabrese, A. (2016, June 10). Backwards Design. Created with Gliffy, from http://www.gliffy.com/go/publish/10754611

GotCredit. (2015, March 16). Learning. Retrieved on June 10, 2016, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakerust/16846023595/in/photolist-rECgUF 

Jehlen, A. (2009). NCLB: Is it Working? Retrieved on June 10, 2016, from http://www.nea.org/home/20755.htm