Final Reflective Summation

In the course of human experience.... gotcha! ;^)

H.Kuri EME Reflections via wordle

This final reflective summation discusses the course experiences and accomplishments as they relate to the course objectives and requirements of the Introduction to Technology for Educators course. 

In regards to the textbook....

Created by Lisa Libby for opensource.com. No changes.

The textbook was quite current and informational. The sources the textbook provided were active in the fields of technology and education and drew from a wide variety of on-line and off-line resources with which to teach and instruct future 21st century educators. Not only were we, as students, introduced to many topics and ideas - but the resources for exploring online helped to make them real for utilization into our future classrooms.

In terms of assignments and activities, the discussion board activities helped to raise the information learned to experiential heights, and provided a wide array of  perspectives which inform and expand learning. The reflective blog posts did assist with insight and reflection into the material and the specifications and rubrics of the activities required students to learn the material in order to write in an expository nature about 1/3 - 2/3 of the concepts in any given chapter on technology in education. 
I think the majority of students really enjoyed the pedagogical and inter-disciplinary nature of the geocaching group activities, and although there was some hesitancy, it became quite fun for all, reportedly.

During the course of the study, while exploring tools and resources, I realized some of my favorites such as Edutopia, which assist future teachers (and parents) with a variety of educational articles and resources which a learner-centered approach, and discovery education, which I also enjoyed greatly. For the final class project of developing an ePortfolio, we were introduced to Weebly and Wix where I created my teaching website fir the ePortfolio submission. The resources will, no doubt, help me to be a better educator, and help me on the way to obtaining my Bachelor's and maybe Master's degrees in Education.

Ultimately, we completed the online requirements (authentic assessment) of the collaborative lesson plan, web-quest, and teacher web-pages to use the technology and web 2.0 tools as a medium and a goal of k-12 instruction, culminating with the ePortfolio website design. These were challenging and difficult requirements, but I am extremely satisfied with the results, all referenced on the above mentioned "teaching website".
For our website review, teacher web page, and collaborative lesson plan we had to research the tools which were available to us, learn how to use them, learn how to work together utilizing the technology (and no offline technology, for the collaborative lesson plan), and understand how these tools and practices could be used to instruct our primary and secondary school students.  Overall, I understand not only how to use these tools, but many of the ways they can be used - and am familiar enough to make reference to them, but still I remain unsure of my capabilities in assisting students in such usage, unless I am teaching English and Technology. 

Both in our online assignments (blog post and online discussion board) and off-line class discussions regarding privacy and legal/ethical issues, very important information was reviewed and many interesting perspectives - both positive and negative - were raised.
Ultimately it was the blog posts and the teacher web page (ePortfolio) which included the samples of how technology can be used to assist learning, classroom management, administration and teaching goals within the classroom. Although the wiki and webquest assisted with these things, for me it was the ePortfolio that "really brought it all home" in terms of understanding.

When we had to develop the rubric for reviewing websites, I had to analyze and summarize the features of a selection of applicable websites. Though we had the discussions and online discussion board for the technology best practices, it was the blogger and the rubric, as well as the collaborative lesson plan that assisted me in reviewing and understanding national, state, and online educational resources. Finally, the Collaborative Lesson Plan and Discussion Board relating to ELL and ESOL students assisted us in researching relevant educational tools as well as identifying and addressing relevant concerns.

Ultimately, although the curriculum was challenging and there was a great deal of information to digest, I learned a lot and feel that I have massively improved my knowledge of 21st century tools and technological skills - even though I possessed intermediate basic skills previous to this course.

My favorite assignment, linked above, was the ePortfolio Teacher Webpage and my favorite tools were the tagxedo, though I used wordle (atop) due to silverlight errors on Windows 8.1.

Resources

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson.