When I sat down and re-read my Personal Growth Plan that I submitted the first week of class, I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I suppose that I did not realize that the goals I set the first week would actually be accomplished. I feel that CEP 810 allowed me to grow professionally and personally in so many ways.
Two specific goals that I had hoped to learn about during this course really stand out to me. First, I wanted to find ways to communicate and collaborate with educators outside of my building and district. By learning about PLN’s, RSS subscriptions and joining countless educational forums and blogs, I feel that I have only started to utilize the so many resources I have at my fingertips that I never existed. I plan to continue to grow my PLN for the rest of my career. This course gave me a chance to not only find the right path for educational collaboration, but also allowed me to follow what interests me.
The second goal I feel that I achieved during this course stated in my Personal Growth Plan is using free applications and software to collaborate and share my work. The SIG proposal, plan and presentation really was imperative in learning these tools. When working with a group that exclusively can only work through the Internet and collaboration tools, I learned great ways to create, share, modify, contribute and chat with people across the world. I have already begun to implement these collaborative tools and applications in my own classroom.
In this course I have not only found what teaching strategies work well for myself when integrating technology, but I also discovered many for my students. I now know that technology skills need to be built upon, and practiced. I also learned about Google Earth, Google Notebook and Wiki’s which have the potential to be great ways to effectively teach while integrating technology.
This course gave me the opportunity to evaluate resources that may or may not be useful for myself as an educator. I enjoyed how I was allowed to discover and make my own decisions, and was not forced to accept what the college believed were the best. By learning new avenues and expanding my PLN, I was given the opportunity to grow.
I believe that the SIG project really exemplified good teaching with technology. As students, we had to create, share, communicate and present together through the use of technology. I believe that student led learning is highly beneficial, and the SIG project had all the elements of a great way to teach with technology.
Throughout the past weeks, I have found myself being excited for the weeks lessons, and sharing what I am learning with friends, family and colleagues. I have so many new goals and ideas just from the lessons I learned in my first course in the Educational Technology program. A long term goal is to get my Masters in Educational Technology from MSU. I also have the goal of helping my district to implement technology in all grade levels. I also realize that I need to implement technology into my own classroom first, which is why I have the goal of having at least one element of technology in every lesson I teach. I understand that this will take years and a lot of work, but I am excited to get started! CEP 810 has been such a positive learning experience for me not only as an educator, but personally as well. I cannot wait to learn more!
When you mentioned your excitement for what each week’s activities may bring, it brought to mind memories of my experiences in the Ed Tech master’s program. We were exposed to a lot of ideas about educational technology during these intense classes and it was great discovering ways to implement them in our lessons. Sharing these ideas with others in the cohort became a catalyst for creating other technology rich lessons. Your goal for becoming a technology leader in your district could be a very rewarding experience because you will be in the middle of all of the creativity surrounding educational technology.
ReplyDeleteYour goal to implement technology into your lessons, one element at a time, is reasonable and will allow you to select the technology that can make a difference in your student’s learning.
The collaboration tools presented during this course can open up the world for both educators and students by removing the classroom walls. Enjoy your journey!