Reflection on Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society masters course from Walden University.
- In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills as a professional teacher?
This course has opened my eyes to technology and more importantly, how to use it. I have known about wiki’s, blogs, and podcasts for a while, but have never used any of them. This course gave me the necessary tools to not only use them effectively, but also inspired me to use them in my teaching.
- In what ways have you deepened your knowledge of the teaching and learning process?
My knowledge of the teaching and learning process has improved considerably. I understand that not all students have the same resources across the nation. I had a feeling that certain students had it better than other students in a different part of the country, but I did not realize how lucky I truly am to be teaching where I am. I have experienced how teachers in this course make due with what they have available to them. Students can learn in any situation, it is all abut how the instruction is delivered.
- In what ways have you changed your perspective from being teacher-centered to learner-centered?
I have become more observant with my classroom procedures and lessons. I am hoping to make the learning experiences of students in my classroom happen with ease. I understand that teachers can learn right along side students. Some students know much more about technology that we give them credit for and I can honestly say on more occasions than I care to count that I have learned something from a student during a lesson that I felt very comfortable teaching thinking that I was an expert in the knowledge base. Many of my students have engineers as parents or other family members and I welcome comments and constructive criticism.
- In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement?
The most obvious way to continue to expand my knowledge is to continue my masters program at Walden University. This program came highly recommended by a few colleagues of mine stating that I would enjoy the courses as well as learning a ton about technology. I will also continue to browse the blogs that were developed during this course hoping for other teachers to keep updating and talking about their experiences with certain techniques they have tried in their classrooms or new technologies they have gotten to use.
Step 2: Set two long-term goals (within two years) for transforming your classroom environment by which you may have to overcome institutional or systemic obstacles in order to achieve them. How do you plan to accomplish these goals?
One long term goal I would like to accomplish in the next couple of years is to be the “go-to” tech guy in my school as it seems to take forever to get our Information Services Technician to fix an issue. The issue I will face is the ridiculous amount of restrictions that are placed on the computers in our building. I would like to present an option to our IS department to allow certain teachers in the district the ability to fix simple computer issues in their respective buildings. This would ease the burden of the technicians being buried with work and not having enough time to get the jobs completed in a respectable amount of time. Currently, we have an issue in one of our computer labs that has needed service for quite some time now. It is a simple java update and install that requires a tech with administrator privileges to accomplish. If there was a building specific tech, this kind of stuff would be completed quickly and leave the tough fixes for the technicians that require special training to complete.
Another goal I am setting is utilizing a working blog for all of my classes. I know our district blocks most blogging sites, so I’d have to petition Information Services and ask to allow my blog address to be accessed on a school computer.
Step 3: Refer to your checklist from Week 1. Have any of your answers changed after completing this course?
I responded to a checklist at the beginning of this course that asked questions about being technologically savvy. I felt fairly comfortable with the technology that I use everyday, but I did not know much about what were were going to be studying in this course, such as wikis, blogs, and podcasts. Upon completion, I feel much more comfortable with using the technologies studied and used in this course. Implementation of this knowledge and information into my curriculum is definitely on my list to accomplish in the upcoming years. I would not say that I am a totally different teacher after this course, but I know that it has definitely changed the way I think and feel technology can be utilized in my classroom. I will be a better teacher and students will hopefully enjoy my course even more than before.
