Reflection of Masters Class - EDUC 6713

When reflecting on my GAME plan in response to the goals I had set for myself, as well as the learning that has taken place throughout this course, I feel I have a better understanding of what authentic learning activities are and how to develop them for my students. I also feel I have developed my own skills in order to meet National Education Technology Standard 1: “Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008) and have a wide range of technological tools that can be implemented into the classroom in order to support authentic instruction. Now that I feel more confident in providing authentic problems using technological tools for students, I will update my GAME plan to include implementation of these activities and reflection of them during and after the activity in order to influence how I implement future authentic activities with students. At the beginning of this course, I did not feel as confident about using technological tools to differentiate instruction for diverse learners. However, now I feel I have a wide range of tools that can be used with all my students for a variety of concept areas in order to meet their individual learning needs, such as digital storytelling and online collaboration tools. With my new knowledge of technological tools, how to use them effectively to meet the needs of my diverse learners, and a greater understanding of how to implement authentic learning activities, I will update my GAME plan to include goals for implementing these specific technologies with my students.

The learning that has taken place throughout this course has already greatly impacted my instructional practice. When implementing activities to encourage online collaboration using epals.com, my students were incredibly engaged with communicating with others and have already begun to broaden their perspectives of the world around them from the first activity. Including technological tools, such a digital storytelling, into my classroom will give my students who do not have good writing skills a way to express what they have learned in a visual way. Beyond my new knowledge of new technological tools, I have learned the importance of creating a plan for my professional growth. It will be important for me to continue to set goals for myself as an educator and take action, monitor, and evaluate my progress towards obtaining my desired goals (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). This same process of setting and monitoring my own goals can be used for my students within the classroom. In order to create self-directed learners, I will use a KWHL chart before beginning a unit of study in order to help my students create and be responsible for their own learning goals (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). Students can even create their own portfolio of their work throughout the year and use this as a way to set, monitor, and evaluate their goals as students.

Immediate adjustments I will make to my instructional practice regarding technology integration as a result of my learning from this course will be to implement the problem-based learning activity and digital storytelling activity from the Unit Plan that I have developed. Because I have already begun to implement the online collaboration lesson into my classroom with students, I will continue to follow the steps and activities outlined in my unit plan. While implementing these lessons, I will refer back to my GAME plan and reflect both “in action” and “ on action” in order to evaluate their effectiveness (Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer, 2009). This is something I have not done before when teaching a lesson and now understand the value and importance of reflecting on new activities for my professional development and to make sure students are meeting specified learning goals. After implementing my unit plan, I will also use digital storytelling in other subject areas in order to provide a visual way for students to show what they have learned. I am especially excited to use digital storytelling for math. While problem-based learning activities cannot be incorporated for every single subject area and standard on a daily basis, I would like to incorporate additional problem-based learning activities in Science and Social Studies throughout the year. I will meet with my grade level team to develop some of these activities so that all our students can take part in problem-based learning activities.  

As my learning and experience with implementing authentic and technology-rich activities into my classroom strengthens, I am excited to find new ways to engage my students in the classroom as well as prepare them for the future.

References:

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETS_for_Teachers_2008_EN.sflb.ashx

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.