Reflective Essay
George Couros said, “Technology will not replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.” When I moved from one middle school to another last year, I moved into a school that was adopting a one-to-one model. Each student was allowed to check out a Chromebook for the entire year to use in the classroom, at school, and at home. I’ve been teaching for eighteen years, and I have always found it imperative to be on top of the latest and greatest teaching methods. “Kids are different today than the past due to the media that is available. Each generation will be different due to the available media to the kids.” (Today’s Students, 2015)
To be completely honest, this course has not helped me to develop any skills that I did not already have with technology. I have built websites in my life and with Google Classroom and other educational platforms, a wiki or website is truly unnecessary. I am very familiar with blogging as I maintained one for my family eight years ago, when blogging was the most popular. I also will not use a blog in the classroom. For one, not all students have the parent permission to post pictures or work to the web. Two, I cannot control who follows the blog, and once again, I will not be responsible for that openness from my classroom. And three, there are other educational sites that I can use to achieve similar goals that a blog can. I use Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat on a personal level, and can not and will not integrate Twitter into my classroom lessons. Social Media is actually not allowed for students in our district, and truly is not a safe place for students to be unless closely monitored, and I can not guarantee that students’ accounts will be closely monitored. If I taught high school or even college, I could see where Twitter might be a more appropriate tool to use, but not at the middle school level. I’ve been using podcasts in my teaching, by creating my own, and integrating others’ podcasts into my lessons. The textbook, “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms”, while in 2010 when it was written was probably a useful and mind-blowing source for educators, is now very outdated. The majority of the websites used as examples are no longer available, and the modern technology as a whole has completely changed and advanced. I found myself more annoyed reading it, than putting it to use. In all, this class is very outdated and needs to be updated for it to be useful to modern teachers. In fact, this class should probably be restructured every year to keep up with the current technology trends. Just as I type this, my eleven year old daughter just came up and showed me a video that she created using an app that I had no idea even existed. The app is very user-friendly and creates professional looking videos all on her cell phone. What a great tool to use in the classroom!
So, how has this class been a benefit to me? I feel that I have benefited by being introduced to the ISTE Standards for Students and ISTE Standards for Teachers. We as educators focus on the standards that we are supposed to teach and the standards we are supposed to meet in our professional evaluations, but with technology transforming from using it as a word processing tool to THE tool to use in the classroom, it’s great to have those standards and resources to use and share with others. In other educational experiences and professional development I have been introduced to Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and am intrigued on how to implement the strategies in my teaching. The idea that teachers have to change their mindset from being the educational leader to the educational facilitator is a huge idea or concept that I am working on. For me to successfully implement Webb’s DOK into every lesson, I must restructure how the lesson is introduced and taught.
As I said above, I will not be implementing any new Web 2.0 or social media tool that we learned in this course for the above reasons, but I do plan on implementing others. My first SMART Goal is that I plan on becoming a Certified Google Educator and learn all of the ins and outs of Google and how they can be used in the Classroom. I would like to be more savvy with Google Sheets so I can use them as assignment pages in my classroom. I plan on completing all of the training by August of 2019 so I can implement all of the strategies into my teaching for the 2019-2020 school year. My second SMART Goal is to implement Webb’s DOK into all of my lessons. I am also looking to create all of my quizzes using a website called Quia. I will be able to create a bank of questions that will dump into quizzes, and if students need to retake a quiz for mastery, they are not getting the same quiz, yet are getting the same concepts all while the quizzes are graded instantaneously and reports are given so I can analyze student data. I also do hope to create lessons that give students the opportunity to create their own podcasts and allow them to become the facilitator of knowledge instead of just participating. “Can be used for teaching and learning. Podcasts can be powerful when students are able to create their own podcast and share them.” (Spotlight on Technology, 2015)
I honestly do not see any types of roadblocks in my own personal implementation of these goals, nor are there any roadblocks with the technology available. The students and I have the tools, I just have to adjust how the students will learn the material and give them time to create a presentation via podcast.
By achieving my goals, I will be a technology learner and a technology leader. I am the Digital First Responder at my school, and I hope to share my knowledge with the rest of the staff. I will be growing students into digital citizens. I will be collaborating with other educators in the district to make the teaching of math and the use of technology more relevant and useful. I will be designing lessons and facilitating them with the Webb’s DOK in mind, and be able to use my time to analyze student data rather than being up in front of the classroom teaching to the middle. (ISTE)
Technology in the classroom is something that will always be evolving. We as educators have to make sure that the students of today are ready for the workplace of tomorrow having skills in collaboration, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, people management, creativity, and so much more. Unless we embrace the new tools that are being created on a daily basis and have an open mind to implement them in our class, we are doing an inservice to the students.
References
Laureate Education (Producer). (2015I). Today’s students [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author
Laureate Education (Producer). (2015f). Spotlight on Technology: Learning with Podcasts [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Aungst, G. (2014, September 04). Using Webb's Depth of Knowledge to Increase Rigor. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/webbs-depth-knowledge-increase-rigor-gerald-aungst
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful Web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
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