The Technology Change I now KNOW I can make

June 18, 2010

The Technology Change I now KNOW I can make

As I finish the 10^th and final course, I feel this is a great opportunity to reflect on some of what I have learned. There were two main distinctions between what I learned in this course and previous courses in this program that are important and helped to make this course enjoyable. Firstly, the technology discussed in this class is more revolutionary in education and is more interesting than merely doing a more standard activity but using a computer. The second piece that I truly appreciated was that we discussed the techniques for implementing change in the classroom and school and acknowledged that there is resistance. This course helped to establish my confidence with a set of plans to have smoother transitions to greater technology integration in my school.

The integration of technology that I used in my lesson went beyond the types of activities that I had typically used in my classroom.  Specifically, they were more game oriented. I took the opportunity to access to an activity that students had only previously used recreationally outside of school and connected it to their learning in the classroom. This is something that I feel comfortable doing because I am able to support my ideas and practices with the theories of how students learn when they are most engaged and the ways that video games reach students in new and interesting ways. Additionally, my lesson plan demonstrates my acknowledgement that currently I need to exemplify the change that I wish to see in the rest of my school and then in the future I can more successfully help others to integrate technology in their own classrooms.

From this course, there are two changes that I would like to make immediately. Firstly, I would like to gain permission to practice the effectiveness of new technologies in my classroom. On the small scale, I believe my administration may be more likely to allow these changes than trying to complete an upheaval of the school practices. In that vein, I’d like to seek approval to experiment with the use of mobile devices in my classroom, maybe only with a few preset activities that I discuss with the administration. Additionally, I will seek permission to use Twitter, an online collaboration sight, to increase parent communication at the grade level. Finally, based on my learning in this class, and specifically from my research during the week 7 application, I would like to pursue the grants that I identified. Especially considering the current economic climate, my school would benefit from the discretionary funding even if it was used to provide a stipend for teachers to work towards the greater implementation of the technology already available to us.

Through this class, and the courses prior, I have changed the way that I create a lesson. Now, I think of the technology that I would like to use and find the areas that it is best suited. That way, when I am ready to move to a new concept, I already have set in place several learning activities that expand the students learning in the 21^st century to engage and enlighten my students in the possibilities of their future.

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