EDLD+5364+-+Final+Assessment

1. What outcomes had you envisioned for this course? Did you achieve those outcomes? Did the actual course outcomes align with those that you envisioned?

When starting this course, my main hope was that I would learn several new strategies for better integrating technology into my curriculum and classroom. I see the way technology has become such an integral part of my students’ lives and I know that embracing technology will help me to reach my students in ways that are meaningful and relevant to their lives. I also envisioned learning how to evaluate the effectiveness of the technology integration I was pursuing in my classroom. It is so important to me that I utilize technology effectively so that it truly enhances my students’ education and doesn’t detract from the curriculum. I truly feel that this course helped me better understand how to implement technology into my classroom on many levels. I have learned a number of new strategies and software programs, some of which I have already begun to incorporate into my curriculum. The CAST Book Builder is an amazing source for presenting information. This program enables you to differentiate a lesson easily and effectively so that you know that each student’s needs are being met, whether upper or lower-level students. GoogleSite and GoogleDocs are also great resources for encouraging collaboration among students, even if they aren’t in the same class, school, or state. These sites allow for efficient collaboration and have built in revision histories so that nothing is “lost” and instructors can monitor how much each student has contributed. However, one of the most important lesons I will take from this class is the ability to monitor how effective I am at integrating technology into my classroom. I plan to begin closely monitoring the effects that technology integration has on achievement levels in my classroom. Although I want the students to enjoy working with technology, I also want to make sure to monitor their success levels to make sure that the technology usa g isn’t detracting from the lesson and material. I also plan on using surveys (such as SurveyMonkey.com) to ask for feedback from my students as to the effectiveness of the technological aspects of the lessons. Knowing what they view as effective and ineffective will be critical to the better integration of technology into my classroom. 2. To the extent that you achived the outcomes, are they still relevant to the work that you do in your school? Why or why not? As a high school chemistry teacher, I find that the lessons and outcomes that I am taking from this course are going to become increasingly more relevant as the years progress and technology becomes even more integrated into the classroom. I find that student motivation and engagement are two areas where I struggle, mostly due to the nature of the material I teach. Oftentimes, students do not want to take chemistry and are simply there to fulfill the state requirements for graduation. Being able to integrate technology into the classroom is vital to increasing these students’ motivation and interest in the curriculum. This integration will also (hopefully) lead to greater student success if it is carried our in a way that enhances the curriculum being taught. I have found that using technology in my classroom, specifically interactive technology such as the CAST Book Builder or a class blog, makes the lessons much more relevant to the students in my classroom. Through the theory of constructivism, it comes as no surprise that today’s students, with their intimate knowledge of technology, will better connect to a curriculum which uses various technological aspects in the presentation of information and design of assessments. I find myself thinking daily about some aspect of technology that I can implement to reach out to my students and make their learning more relevant to their lives. 3. What outcomes did you not achieve? What prevented you from achieving them? I do not feel as though there was an outcome that I did not achieve. However, I would like to have spent a greater amount of time working on the CAST Book Builder site during Week 3. With the extensive amount of work assigned in that week, I do not feel that I had adequate time to familiarize myself with the software. I think that the Book Builder activity could have taken a more prominent role in Week 3, with a more detailed rubric as to the criteria required for our books. I would like to have had more time (and the incentive of a more advanced rubric) to explore more of the functions, such as the coaches and the student response areas. Overall, I felt that the pacing of the course was good; however, more time to work on assignments outside of the group GoogleSite would have been of great benefit to those who, like me, are novices at many of these technology-rich teaching tools. 4. Were you successful in completing the course assignments? If not, what prevented or discouraged you? Ultimately, I was successful in completing the various course assignments for the class. This course offered a number of challenges and I know that the amount of influence this course will have on my teaching in the future will be a testament to those challenges. For my personal assignments, my greatest obstacles came from my inexperience with various forms of technology. I was not familiar with any of the tools that presented in these lessons before starting this course and had to learn to utilize their help features and any models that were available. For the group assignments, a number of hurdles arose throughout the five weeks of this course. The largest challenge was in losing one of our teammates when she decided to drop the course in Week 2. The three of us have worked as a team in a number of courses in the past and we all have strengths that we bring to the table to make our group complete. The second challenge came when we were asked to take on another teammate toward the end of Week 3. This teammate did not maintain open lines of communication with the two of us and was continually late when we set group deadlines for completing assignments and updating our GoogleSite. He also flagrantly copied pieces of our work and refused to update the technology activities for the lesson he was assigned. In the end, we both had to go back and edit all of the changes he had made to ensure that the assignments’ rubric criteria were adequately met and our unit was cohesive and research-based. In short, it felt as though we had to work twice as hard to ensure that our group project was something that we were comfortable submitting. 5. What did you learn from this course: about yourself, your technology and leadership skills, and your attitudes? Throughout this course, I learned so much about myself in terms of my abilities in the area of technology and project management. One of the most valuable lessons I will take with me is my bette understanding of how to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. So often I have been content with just integrating a web search or wiki post and I have not taken the time to analyze if that activity actually increased my students’ understanding of the material and overall success. I now have a greater appreciation for implementing assessments that will allow me the opportunity to gauge how effective an activity was and if it enhanced or detracted from the lesson. I also learned a great deal about working in groups. I oftentimes have my students work in cooperative groups because I see the positive effects of different backgrounds coming together to explore a common problem. However, I want to begin integrating more technology-based group activities so that I can better monitor student participation and understanding. On sites such as GoogleSite, a group can collaborate and I, as the instructor, will be able to view their revision history. This will allow me to not only see who contributed, but also what they contributed. Through this, I can get a good assessment of each student’s understanding of the concepts and information being covered in class.