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.