Reflection of Foundations of Educational Technology EEND-675

My Final Thoughts

I cannot believe that this course is coming to an end. Truth be told, I was terrified when I registered to take this technology course because as a Reading Improvement teacher, I was not using any technology with my students beyond skill specific programs. Additionally, I had never taken an online class. The saying goes “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Well let me tell you, this course opened my eyes to the vast depths of how much I did not know related to technology in education! A lot has changed in my five years out of a general education classroom and I sorely needed this course to help begin to fill in my gaps of knowledge. I can honestly say that parts of this course were difficult for me, but I definitely learned important content with each passing week. This knowledge created excitement for me to try incorporating more technology, and reference the ISTE standards, with wonderful results. I appreciated the activities that required us to connect to our current teaching roles and the dialogs created through responses to discussion postings. The Google videos throughout the Modules were especially helpful since I had a basic understanding of Google to build on and Google is the collaborative tool that is consistent throughout my district. They were definitely my favorite part of each module and I honestly began to look forward to those tutorials each week. 

Module 1-ISTE Standards
The first part of this module required an Introductory Blog post. Luckily, I was able to dust off an old blogger site from my days in the classroom. Deleting the assignment notebook type posts was rather easy, and a fun walk down memory lane. However, knowing the amount of time and effort I put into making the content related links (think of them like links in a Google Classroom or Google Sites page) I could not get myself to delete them at the bottom of my site. It was interesting (and fun) to read the introductory blogs of classmates and to see that there was a great variety of grades, positions, and districts within our class. So assignment 1 was finished and it was time to move into the module.

My initial reaction when I started this module was “What? There are standards for technology? For students AND teachers? When did these happen? Why haven’t I heard about them at my school?” Total and complete PANIC! Obviously learning about the importance of these standards and how they can be integrated into CCSS was helpful and reduced my worries about my lack of ever hearing about them. Simply being aware that they exist has prompted me to reference them when doing interactive technology activities with my students.

Module 2-Online Digital Collaboration
While moving through Module 2, I was still moderately terrified of how far behind I was in relation to technology, but I became excited to see all of the different interactive and collaborative resources that are available to use in education. I joined many of the websites listed and created a bookmark folder to keep track of all of the links so that I don’t forget about them. At one point, however, I remember feeling overwhelmed with choices. Many of the sites appeared to do the same tasks, so it was a little difficult to sort out which ones I would use and which I would not. While looking at possible collaborative resources, I realized that many of my students will not have access to some of the resources due to the security locks on their school maintained Google accounts. Luckily, Adobe Spark, Pear Deck, FlipGrid, WeVideo, and almost anything Google are available for most of the students I see to utilize at school. In my discussion for this module, I wrote “I think the best way for me to start to incorporate more collaborative tools into my daily teaching is to jump in and try Pear Deck and FlipGrid with just two grade levels. This will allow me to get to know the tools’ capabilities, and see how they work with my students during small group reading instruction. I need to investigate further to see if Padlet is available to use in my small groups, as it looked like a great tool!” I can happily say that I have have used Flipgrid multiple times with a number of my groups and the kids love it! They ask to add additional videos to Flipgrid at home and have started recording themselves reading from chapter books and responding to a question they make up for themselves, or record a themselves and a friend reading a partner poem for FUN! Additionally, Padlet IS available for my students and I have used that with my upper grade level groups in place of sticky notes inside their non-fiction books. I am a bit frustrated that I can only have 4 Padlets going at a time, but this is something I will deal with for now. I have yet to try PearDeck. That requires a bit more set up/planning and I just haven’t gotten to it yet. 

Module 3-Multimedia and Ethics in Educational Technology
Digital Citizenship, Fair Use, Plagiarism, and Flipgrid responses were all in Module 3. This module was very helpful to me as a students about to begin class number 2 of my ELL Cohort. It made me realize just how careful I need to be when using researched material and creating citations. I’m still not 100% positive I know what to do each time, but luckily I can research for examples and know that I put my best effort into not plagiarizing. 

As a teacher, this module prompted me to start incorporating 12 word summary practice with my 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade groups to help reduce the likelihood that they will simply copy from books during research times. This module could not have come at a better time, as all three grade levels were just starting their end of year research projects. Next year, I would like to do this as a weekly activity with my upper grade level groups. The students thought it was fun to try to piece together our words like a puzzle.

Also thanks to this module, I hung a copy on the Fair Use checklist on the board behind our copy machine at work. I do not go in the copy room much, but I have heard there were many discussions about that checklist. One teacher apparently commented that perhaps her copying of her teammates entire books of short passage activities is not exactly legal, since she is copying them so she does not have to buy them. Opps!

And then there was our Flipgrid assignment. I suppose due to YouTube, kids think it is fun to be videotaped. I, however, was not initially a huge fan of being recorded, and could not get the time constraint to work for me. I think I did my response at least 20 times to make it fit, while having enough details in my response! My children at home thought it was fun to decorate my snapshot picture and “help” with my homework. I greatly enjoyed how some of my fellow classmates did their Flipgrid responses at their schools and actually showed posters and classroom set ups.

Module 4-Educational Technology Pedagogy-SAMR/TPACK
Pedagogy, the 4 C’s, and educational technology trends were the main topics in this module. However, I found the Google Earth tutorial in this module was really interesting because I didn’t know I could use Google Earth in this manner at all! I actually really enjoyed this module. I felt that it was relevant to what I was seeing around me at work with more hands-on type activities, flexible seating, and MakerSpace materials in our LMC. It was beneficial for me to read further about those topics.

Module 5-Evaluating Online Tools and Assessments
By the time this module started, I was definitely feeling comfortable with this course. I enjoyed this module. I chose to research a tool that my district did not currently own, NearPod. I haven’t used this tool yet with my students, however I do plan to try it out. I liked a lot of the options of this tool. This assignment was good because I had to look through a few tools, and choose one that would work best for me. I also liked that classmates had been mentioning tools they were familiar using in their discussion posts, so that is where I made my initial list to investigate further. I feel that personal recommendations are better than blindly choosing based on the sales pitch on websites.

Module 6-Growing Professionally in a Digital World
Oh Twitter! I had made a Twitter account at an institute day long ago because we we all had to make one. I never did anything past that. Throughout this course, I had been adding the recommended people to follow, but had not really followed up with the account very much. This module required me to actually explore, and post, on Twitter! I chose to keep my Twitter soley a professional resource and to only use it during my lunch or plan times at work. I have found amazing article to read and share with staff related to reading at all grade levels. I am not at the point of following blogs yet. Small steps seem to be working the best for me as far as getting better acquainted with technology. 

Module 7-Managing Devices in the Classroom
In my current role, this module provided a few helpful examples of classroom management for my small groups, but it was mostly geared to larger class settings. I liked the verbage “1-2-3 Chromebooks on me” and have used that in two of my groups to ensure the students working away from me were on the correct site.

Module 8-Student Portfolios
I really like the idea of student portfolios that can travel with them from year to year. I feel like digital portfolios are something that would be beneficial to use with my students in Reading Improvement. I like that the parents would be able to view work, and the students could see how much they accomplished and grew over the school year. I would like to have my own children at home start to build portfolios over the summer so that I can have a good understanding of one portfolio option to ensure I can hit the ground running with my students in the fall.

Overall, I am extremely happy I took this course. It has really helped me BEGIN to fill in my gaps in educational technology knowledge. I have been able to share ideas with my teammates and update our shared Google Site. My students have had a lot of fun using their Chromebooks in new ways in my classroom. We have even used tools that their classroom teachers are not using. Thanks to some of the assignments, I began asking some of my more “techie” teachers questions and we have had good conversations about resources they use and the reasons they like to use them. I do not plan to take another technology course in the near future, but perhaps I will take another after I complete my ELL endorsement cohort. This course gave me a great platform to begin exploring and incorporating educational technology resources into my daily teaching.