My Final Reflection on Teaching with Technology

The importance of formative assessments, whether in the form of visual feedback provided by technology or auditory feedback given by the teacher , can be the most effective mechanism for engaging students in the learning process. "Many of us have heard a struggling mathematics student say something like, “I’m just not good at math. My mom wasn’t good at math either. When a student makes a connection between academic successes with factors outside of his or her control—things like heredity, gender, or race—it’s easy to develop a defeatist attitude." (Pitler, 2007) Many of the students that are in my program are the first generation to attend college in their families and have no model to follow; in some cases I am the influence that can either make or break their educational goals. The quote above points out that students need immediate feedback both visual and auditory. A teacher needs to realize that their role is not only to present curriculum, but in many cases to reinforce or encourage students to realize the role they play in their own educational goals; we may be the only 'cheerleader' in their lives.

I also need to remember that while technology can be utilized to enhance the delivery of curriculum to optimize the experience of diverse learners, the course outcomes must be met and assessed. The emphasis on the balance between the focus on technology and assessment in our readings has already proven to be invaluable in my program. I have provided detailed rubrics for my class final projects to ensure that students understand what is expected of them and outcomes are clearly defined.

Reference:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Chapter 8. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Teaching With Technology - the Only Way to Go in the 21st Century

Teaching with Technology has taught me to really pay attention to how my students respond to the modes of formative assessment I offer. While I work in a program that naturally lends itself to project-based assessments, I need to be aware of the limitations. “Organizing groups based on ability levels should be done sparingly.” and “Cooperative learning groups should be rather small in size” definitely changed my original model for setting up team projects (Pitler, 2007). The creation of a UDL made me plan lessons in a way that would include multiple forms of delivery to meet the needs of the diverse learners that may be in my classroom. In a college environment, students are responsible for seeking learning counselors and acquiring paperwork unlike the IEPs provided by the primary and secondary school system. Chapter 10 of Web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools included tools that I will implement such as WebAnywhere to address the needs of visually impaired students. The text-to-word feature in Microsoft Word can help my hearing impaired students by being able to listen to my lessons; a consideration that never dawned on me before this class.

“The way to gain insight into learning processes is not by giving an end-of-unit test, but by examining the interaction between a student and curriculum over time, assessing performance and the factors that underlie it. What cues does the student attend to? What strategies does the student use? What motivates the student? This interaction also involves studying the effects of different aspects of curriculum. What changes in the content presentation are helpful? What kinds of feedback and supports help build skills? What content and what kinds of activities are most engaging?” ( Rose, 2002). I need to use Assessments for Learning instead of Assessments of Learning. The use of Web 2.0 tools helps me to monitor students in an ongoing formative process to make changes and intervene when necessary, but also allow the students creative control over their own learning.

The lack of effective professional development really hinders the use of technology in the classroom. The “one-day professional development session, often after school when everyone is tired and focused on other issues” is a terrible model and has a negative effect on the entire educational system (Solomon, 2007). I have taken the knowledge from this course and have a mission to help my fellow colleagues move into the 21st century with technology using the resources from this class; I recently created a wiki where I have put links to open source software and tutorials for teachers to utilize as well as scheduled visits to classrooms for one-on-one assistance. One of my colleagues has taught an online class for a year and has a group project as one of the assignments; his suggestion to his students was to meet at Starbucks one day a week or email each other. With the knowledge gained from this program I was able to offer a better way; google docs with chat. We need to change the educational system one teacher at a time.

Here are the results of my team's efforts to create a Universal Design for Learning for diverse learners that incorporates effective professional development:




Resources:

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002).Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chapter 7.

Solomon, G. & Schrum, L (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, New schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Take that "No Talking in the Classroom" sign out!

As the focus turned to the benefits of cooperative learning this week, I found myself in familiar territory. While I was a member of the 'rows of desks' facing toward the front of the classroom generation, I now work in a very collaborative project-based classroom. The desks are facing each other in 4's which immediately connects students as soon as they walk in the door. My Game Design program lends itself to base groups, which are defined as longer term groups such as within a semester class. "Base groups help build trust, cameraderie, and teamwork..." (Pitler, Hubbel, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). Every semester I see how students enjoy the interaction and learn so much more from their peers.

The discussions this week were interesting. While our focus on diverse learning involves the students, another peer replied to my discussion and pointed out that we, regardless of age and station in life, are all diverse learners; a consideration when not only planning our classroom curriculum to meet the lesson objectives, but also something to address when laying out a professional development session. We need to offer multiple Web 2.0 technologies to teachers in these sessions, maybe not so concentrated on the technology itself, but effective ways a selection of technologies can be utilized by students to present their knowledge of a subject or lesson.

Reference:

Pitler, H., Hubbel, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works . Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 139-154.

Creating Lessons for Diverse Learners

The process of creating a lesson plan that takes the needs of many diverse learners into account is a reality of being a teacher in the 21st century. Cultural, economic, and disability issues as well as district budget constraints affect the education that our students will receive; we as technology leaders need to search out and utilize the most effective tools to ensure our students are getting a superior educational experience to produce citizens that can be competetive in a global economy.

I found the CAST website and the Universal Design for Learning a great resource for offering teachers tools and direction in creating lesson plans that can achieve the goal of making sure all students not only meet the objectives of the TEKS in all subjects, but to excel and engage them in the learning process at all levels. The information I continue to collect from the Educational Technology Leadership program through Llamar University will be invaluable in my future endeavors to improve the educational experinece of my students as well as students in surrounding districts.

My link to the Universal Design for Learning Lesson Plan I created using the CAST Lesson Builder:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnwzZ2lybHMyZ3V5c3xneDo1MzVmN2ZiZDY0NDVhZGQ2

Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners in the 21st Century

The fact that we live in the 21st century and tools are accessible that we did not previously have to meet the needs of diverse learners is a blessing; the problem is tying lesson outcomes to effective use of technology with a teacher population that mainly consists of digital immigrants. While I consider myself ahead of the curve as one of the few women who pursued a degree in Computer Science when these technologies were just emerging, most teachers do not know how to balance the time teaching a technology due to unfamiliarity and improper training with using technology to enhance the learning experience for students.

Collaborating with my group this week on what technologies to incorporate in our UDL lesson plan/unit was an eye-opener; there are so many available. The resources provided by the Center for Applied Special Technology helped me understand the concept of working with a Universal Design for Learning plan and what technologies would work best with different outcomes. Teachers can feel overwhelmed by the amount of resources out there; it is important for us as Technology Leaders to find what works and share this information with educators so we can make their teaching more effective.

Teaching With Technology

It is interesting to see the progression of our teaching strategies keeping up with the needs of our learners. The most important aspect of the Educational Technology Leadership program through Lamar University is the participants' desire to serve the needs of this generation to ensure their future success. As a student brought up in the constructivist age where we were individual learners and not encouraged to collaborate in groups, I can see the differentiation between the 'internal' learning that I did and the 'external' learning that can be gained from knowledge collected from interacting with other learners. My program consists mainly of group projects and I can definitely see the benefit of students sharing their own perspectives with each other; new knowledge is constructed through this process.

I had never heard of cyborg theory and found the intersection of Keven Warwick's experiment with the technological advances in gaming to be undeniable. One of the assignments in my class is for students to discuss what they think the future of gaming holds and the majority agree that telekenetic communication is definitely in our near future. Having this material to share with them is exciting; I am sure they will have a lot to say about it! The information I have obtained in Week 1 of Teaching With Technology has already proved invaluable.

Life on the Other Side of The Desk

Having taught for ten years, being on the other side of the desk is a daunting experience at times but definitely worth the effort. I have learned to use educational tools and incorporate multiple strategies into finishing my assignments that I never utilized as a 'digital immigrant' student. I am definitely more of an active learner; I need to interact with the material to see how it works. "Kindergarteners can listen to individual letters and work in an exploratory fashion" (Duffield & Wahl, 2005). I am definitely an exploratory learner which can be a positive and a negative. While using the readings to complete the assignment, I have a tendency to jump from reading and doing which made me complete the newsletter assignment in a less efficient fashion, but I feel that I learned more. "Many teachers use newsletters as part of cross-curriculum, authentic learning activities" (Lamb, 2005). I would like to bring what I have learned about creating an effective newsletter into my gaming program for students to research and assess information about the gaming industry.

Using the discussion boards, blog, and wiki to share my work improved the end result of the newsletter. Getting feedback from colleagues is invaluable to obtaining an optimal product."Students should learn through a variety of learning strategies, learning experiences, and perspectives" (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.). My newsletter needs to be embraced by other readers through the incorporation of design strategies studied in this course. Who better to give feedback than colleagues going through the same experience? A fresh set of eyes always puts a different perspective on a work in progress, usually for the better.

Although I am a 'digital immigrant', I will continue to search out new ways to incorporate existing technologies into my curriculum. I would like to spend more time into creating multifaceted assessments that utilize many of the free technologies to serve other educational purposes in the community. My students will be working on smartphone applications for teaching in the spring; I cannot wait to see what they produce - stay tuned!


References:


Lamb, A. (2005). Planning Newsletters. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from http://eduscapes.com/sessions/publishing/planning.htm

Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, (n.d.). Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from http://www.netc.org

Wahl, L., & Duffield, J. (2005). Using Flexible Technology to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners: What Teachers Can Do. Retrieved December 17, 2010, from WestEd: www.wested.org