Reflection Questions

In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills?

In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of technology integration with the aim of increasing student achievement?

Set two long-term goals (within two years) for transforming your classroom environment into a place where technology is integrated seamlessly to meet instructional goals and increase student achievement. How do you plan to accomplish these goals?

Reflection Response

This course has helped me immensely in my understanding of technology and its role in the classroom. The possibilities are many and so are the opportunities for using technology as an instrument for learning that promotes critical thinking and an awareness of what a 21st century learner is. Having taken the time to explore blogs, wiki's, podcasts is just the beginning for myself. The next step is to continue to implement this sort of technology into my curriculum. A point of emphasis for myself will be to get some of my colleagues on board and begin to collaborate with other classes and hopefully other schools in the near future. The hands on approach was great for me as I continue to develop what I have learned into something that will be an intricate part of my teaching style for year to come.

Providing an audience for my students writings via blogs and wiki's promotes many of the concepts Dr. Thornburg and Dr. Dede discussed in the course videos. A style of learning that promotes a rethinking of the pedagogy of old and promotes critical thinking that requires searching out new concepts and transitions teachers from information providers to facilitators of knowledge that goes beyond our conventional ways of thinking. The "digital native" Mark Prensky describes has proven to be a great topic for discussion. Exactly who fits this distinction may continue to be debated, but one thing is for certain we see them on a daily basis in our classrooms and their new learning styles need to be met in order to prepare young American for the 21st century workplace.

My plan is to transform much of my curriculum over the next couple months in order to have it in place for next years incoming freshman. I have tinkered around with some of the new skills I have acquired already by creating a podcast that turned out to be very successful. The students really lit up when presented with an opportunity to do something different than the traditional activities. I was really a teacher that was stuck in the past and saw this graduate program as a necessity if I were going to remain relevant and useful to my students.

My most immediate goals are to begin with blogs as a way to collaborate and share ideas. I have often felt like so much work my students do in my English class is left in a way unsung. By promoting the use of blogs students will begin to share their ideas about the novels we read and the essays we write in a more transparent environment that a blog can provide. Hopefully gone are the days where I am the only audience young writers share their thoughts with. Having a voice is a large part of what makes Americans unique and being able to share that voice as a way of learning new ideas will continue to be important to our 21 century learners. Much of the same can be said about wiki's as well. Being able to jigsaw together concepts that can be amended and expanded upon by the gaining of new knowledge promotes a collaborative type of learning that will transcend itself into the workforce as well.

The course has opened my eyes not only to the wealth of technology out there, but how it can be used to teach and what it does to promote a new style of critical thinking.

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008a). “Debate- Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants” . [Motion picture]. Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. Baltimore : Author

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).
Use the Proquest Central database, and search using the article's title.

Some more on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I had another chance to look through the website and found the The Mile Guide. A comprehensive plan on how to implement 21st century skills not only into the curriculum, but into the education process as a whole. It stresses the need to for students to master the core subjects, and as an English teacher I can appreciate that. Often I have students ask the age old question of "why do I need to learn this?" My response is always the same, "English is a cross curricular subject and we take the skills we master here and apply them to mathematics and science and everything else we do."

It seems in today's world students want everything now, but don't want to take the necessary steps to get there. We as educators have a tremendous task before us. Unlike in generations past where teaching basic skills was often the norm, we are now in need of finding ways to merge the working world with the world of education. I really feel it is paramount for our students to get all of these skills and the partnership for the 21st century is an innovative website that begins to address these issues.

The Mile guide is a great starting point for assessing where a school district is in this process and where they need to be going. We all need to "Empower the people network" more in education. In the short while I have been teaching I have learned one thing, put the power to learn in the hands of those being taught and they will begin to discover new concepts on their own. I believe in the old saying, "it takes a village to raise the young", maybe in the 21st century we will one day say, "it takes the whole globe to teach the young."

Partnership for the 21st Century Skills

My initial response was that this could be another helpful resource for educators, but as I went deeper, I began to understand the importance of the web site. Many others like it offer a wealth of information and resources to guide teachers in the 21st century, but this site seems to be focused more on creating an initiative to achieve these skills. Offering a visitors the opportunity to interact and submit ideas is a great jumping off point for getting people involved. Collaboration is truly going to be the key for the modern learner.

I was a little dissapointed not to see my state involved. What did impress me though was that there seems to be some investors on board. Without proper funding we won't achieve anything, take for example the No Child Left Behind Act.

This reminded me of piece I listned to on NPR a while back. They were discussing an inititive that got high school aged students placed in real working environment in order to expose them to the real world skills and critical thinking. These opportunites, much like what the Partnership is advocating, is providing skills that studetns will use in the future. It simply amazed me to learn that our studetns spend only about 15 minutes per week using technology in our schools compared to what how much time they will be spending with technology in the workplace. The gap needs to be tightened not widened and maybe a project such as this can help.

The implications for this project could be enormous, but it will remain to be seen if we can get everyone on board. We are often mired by the politics of everything when it comes to inititives that are all encompassing.

Weblogs and Education

I would like to use my blog in my classroom as a tool for my class to communicate with other students. Students could use the read/write web as a way to share ideas on a common unit or theme with other students from around the globe. Providing students the opportunity to share information with a world wide audience could have tremendous learning power for students in the 21st century.

From what I have recently learned blogs serve a vast array of learning purposes from improving the technical aspects of writing to critical thinking about the world around them.

A good blog could showcase polished pieces of writing that students wish to share with an audience that extends to the farthest reaches of one's imagination. A good blog could also serve the purpose of storing information and written work. As stated in this weeks reading teachers have been able to incorporate a variety of outside sources to share and comment on the content of a web page. It would also serve as a great place for teachers to find, share, and express new ideas.

Blogging can truly bring a lesson to life. Being able to interact with all that is readily available on the Internet; incorporating pictures, video clips, speeches from the past, and the list goes on and on. I believe it would also play a role in improving student writing because they now realize how many people would have access to their content, even if it was just classmates.

I am a teacher of English at the 9th and 10th grade level at Lapeer West High School in Lapeer, MI. My rational for teaching with a blog not only introduces studetns to an element of technology that is here to stay, it also is a way to contibute knowledge for others to analyze. The ability to archive and in turn quickly retrieve student work for the sake of reflection and rethinking will greatly enhance student learning and teacher development. But this is just the tip of the ice berg, the opportunities seem quite limitless.

Hello to all of my fellow WaldenU students. Welcome to my first ever blog.