What Have I Learned?
When I look back over this course and think about what I’ve learned, the first thing that comes to mind is all the new technology tools: Glogster, sliderocket, explorelearning.com, tons of mobile apps, and many, many more. Add to that the countless integration ideas and strategies, both from my own research and from reading everyone else’s posts, and I feel l have enough technology integration ideas to cover the next decade. Finally, I picked up so many insights from the textbook, articles, and research on the benefits of technology integration in both general and special education curriculum. All of these ideas will not only benefit my own classroom, but I have already begun to share them with my colleges around the school, and with teachers at my former schools in Kansas and Korea.
How Has Theory Guided My Project Development?
I believe educational theory has had a major impact on every project I have developed for this class. My weekly routine was to read the textbook and provided literature, reflect on how the ideas presented in those readings could be implemented in my project, and then finally, create my assignment. Additionally, I tried to use best-practice methods for all of my presentations regardless of it was required or not. For example, I regularly used glogster, voice thread, and other more visual/auditory based methods of presentation so that my work was more accessible to different types of learners.
How Have I Grown Professionally?
I believe I have grown by leaps and bounds this semester. This is my first year teaching computer technology and I’ll admit, I wasn't 100% certain I was ready for it. However, after this course, I believe I have a firm grasp on the role technology plays in education and on where my particular class fits into that role. The readings and projects from this semester have helped me to develop an engaging, interactive, and challenging curriculum that I believe will benefit and prepare my students to be 21st century learners and citizens.
How Has My Teaching Practice Been Influence?
As I hinted at above, my teaching practice has evolved immensely. Looking back at the work I was assigning at the beginning of the semester (simple “make a poster in publisher” projects) to the now (“create an online portfolio through wix.com of all your work and reflect on how this technology can be utilized in other classes”) I’d say my teaching practice barely even resembles where I was at the beginning of the year.
Part 2 – Self Assessment
I will get to the content of my posts in a moment, but to start with I believe my resources, timeliness, and responses to other students are all in order for the semester. I found a great variety of excellent resources to utilize throughout the course, my assignments were always on time (despite the constant battle I was waging with Colombian internet), and I responded to two or more students every week.
As for content, I would say the great majority of my posts were, “Rich in content, full of thought, insight and synthesis with clear connections to previous or current content and/or to real life situations made with depth and detail.” However, I’ll admit, there was one blog that was a bit more rushed, my “relative advantages of spreadsheets” post. While it did meet the bare minimum requirements for a post, it was definitely lacking in creative insight. That post aside, I feel I did a solid job on the rest of the work for this class, and looking back I am very happy with the posts I have written.
And to Dr. Gerstein and the other students in this class, thank you for the great feedback throughout the semester. This was my first class on my way to earning my tech integration certification, and I must say, I’m very happy with how this program has begun. Thank you.
-Mike Karlin