Reflection Post EDUC 6715: New and Emerging Technologies

Looking at my completed learning activity, implementation plan and grant rationale, I can see that I have come a long way from the start of the course. This project demonstrates my learning in this course because I was able to take everything we’ve discussed and put it into a plan. Throughout this class, we learned about how to identify, incorporate and influence the adoption of emerging technologies. My finished work demonstrates what I have learned for each of these. I designed a learning activity that incorporates a digital game, an emerging technology in education. I also described how this activity could support content area and 21st century learning in order to influence their adoption. Finally, I developed a rationale for a grant proposal for using digital games.

I didn’t know much about emerging technology and I knew even less about getting my school to adopt them. After completely the course I feel more comfortable about my ability to incorporate new technology in my classroom activities and about influencing technology change at my school. My new knowledge and experience has given me the ideas and strategies that I can share with my school. It has also given me the resources to continue my learning now that the program is done. Since this is the last course in the program, I also want to mention that this ten course sequence has given me more insight and strategies then I ever expected. I am excited to implement what I learned and pass it on to colleagues.

I plan to continue to use the resources and links that we used in this course to keep myself up to date with emerging technologies. I have already added some of the websites from this course to my bookmarks. As a result of this course, I have learned how to look at emerging technologies through an educational stand point (even if they weren’t made for that purpose). I also plan to continue to gradually incorporate what I’ve learned in this course and the entire program at Walden into my daily teaching repertoire. Finally, I plan to take what I have learned in this program and share it with my colleagues. Hopefully, I can volunteer to run some workshops on staff development days to share the ideas and insights I have gained through Walden about educational technology.

Online Learning in K-12 Schools

I have created a cartoon video using xtranormal to give information about the potentials of online learning. You can view this video at
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6327887

References
Johnston, S. (2007). Developing Quality Virtual Courses: Selecting Instructional Models. In P. Adamson, B. Adamson, & N. Clausen-Grace, et al (Eds.),What Works in K-12 Online Learning (Chapter 2, pp. 21-31). Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Young, J., Birtolo, P., & McElman, R. (2009). Virtual success: Transforming education through online learning. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(5), 12–17. Search using the Education Research Complete database by the article's title.

Reflection Blog EDUC 6714: Reaching and Engaging All Learners through Technology

The Differentiation Station social network portion of this course turned out to provide me with so many useful resources in Universal Design for Learning. Due to the group effort and collaboration, we were all able to accumulate so many more links and resources than we would have individually. There are many resources that my group has posted that I have already bookmarked and used for our course assignments. I also plan to continue to refer to these resources for additional ideas and support as I gradually start implementing UDL in my classroom. We searched, located and shared a large amount of valuable resources

As a result of this course, I have learned many ways to use technology to customize instruction. I also learned and I think I got the most out of using technology to customize assessment. Before taking this course, I offered my student some options and I have differentiated my instruction to some extent. However, the area that most of this was taking place was in the actual teaching and learning part of my instruction not the assessment. I was stuck in the traditional written exam format for all students. This course helped me to see that this is not the only way to assess my students and it has offered me many new options that differentiate assessment, offer options to my students in the area of assessment and incorporate technology into my assessment. An immediate adjustment I will make as a result of this course is to offer my students more options and flexibility in my assessment methods and to have at least some options use technology tools. I love the clickers and I think I will start to push my school to invest in them. I also loved the on-line surveys we developed in week 2, I plan on implementing them immediately also to replace my paper versions.