Digital Badge #Reflection Post

Resources:

Clip Art
Youtube


Reflection Post

In this final post, I will be reflecting on my experiences in my EME2040 Intro To Technology Course.  This course was very beneficial in many ways.  Everything in the course, from the textbook, discussion posts, various activities, assignments, and this very blog, had a very positive impact on my identity as a future teacher.  In order to better understand how all this benefited me, and in addition, sum up the entire semester, I thought it would be best to structure my blog by reviewing the things I’ve accomplished in this course, giving my thoughts and reflections about them, and along the way, show off some of the things I learned to do. 

The Textbook

To begin with, the textbook, Transforming Learning with New Technologies, was the required textbook for this online course.  In my opinion, this textbook was not only useful in this class, but very beneficial to my other teacher related courses.  This book was designed to inform and educate the reader how integrating technology in the classroom can increase productivity, engagement, enhancement of a lesson plan, and above all, as result, achieve better assessment scores.  I appreciated how each chapter was constructed and designed so that the reader, whether new to technology or not, could easily follow and understand what the learning outcomes were to be.  Overall, this book helped me better understand my digital identity as a teacher. 

The Discussion Posts

In addition to the regular assignments that were to be expected in this course, we had to participate in multiple discussion posts.  The discussion post assignments were designed to not only, as an individual, seek answers to the question or topic given, but also have the social skills, via internet, to reply to our fellow classmates and their individual posts.  I truly enjoyed doing the posts because it allowed me to broaden my education and knowledge of a particular subject.  Also, it helped me connect with my classmates.  But above all, it allowed me to view the ideas and opinion of others when it came to talking about the same topic.  As a future educator, I found this to be very helpful because this is a great demonstration towards challenging our own teaching philosophies.  In other words, although there is one topic, there is no guarantee that there is only one absolute answer.  It is our duty, as a future teacher, to listen to others and their values and beliefs, and respect that.  In the classroom, it will be our duty to understand why the student believes they are right or be patient when they continue getting the answers wrong.  This is where integrating technology may be the answer to the problem.  By "discussing" our thoughts and ideas and integrating technology as an enhancement to that discussion, the chances of the student learning the material becomes realistic. Below is a link that you can visit and it shows some examples on how integrating technology in the classroom has benefited the overall curriculum.  

 http://www.edweek.org/media/edtechstats.pdf




Activities and Assignments
The activities and assignments that we conducted in this course ranged from difficult to very difficult, according to our use of time management, collaboration, and creativity.  I personally thought that the modules made everything simple to follow, was elaborate, and was specific about what the expectations were.  To be honest, these activities and assignments could have been easy for me to follow but my poor time management and lack of communication with the professor and my fellow peers became the reason for late submissions.  But every assignment had a purpose though.  I truly enjoyed doing them because although I started this course as something of a novice to technology, these activities helped clarify the questions and obstacles I had and will most likely face again when I become a teacher. These assignments really enhanced my digital identity as a future educator.

• Website Evaluation Rubric: This assignment was a great way to start us off because it allowed us to evaluate an online source and create a rubric in the process.  Although my rubric had potential, it was not to satisfactory.  This was a great way to show me that my idea of a rubric was not what I thought.  Rather it looks more professional and fits in as a guideline on what to expect from your evaluation subject.  

• Instructional Strategies Wiki: This collaboration project was very interesting because my preconceived notion of a collaborative project was that it would be simple and easy to conduct.  This project required us to create a wiki page, as a group, on Howard Gardner's theories.  My Cooperation theory was something to be proud of.  This project allowed me to challenge myself and learn to use clip art, videos, images, and charts to elaborate on my theory.  It was useful to me also because I can definitely see myself assigning my students to create their own wiki page for further understanding on a particular subject, theory, or area of learning.  

• Webquest:  Creating a webquest was one of my favorite assignments because it allowed me to have a first hand experience creating a lesson plan and making sure to integrate technology into it; something I have difficulty adapting to.  

• Teacher Webpage Portfolio:  This portfolio was the last assignment for this course.  It justified itself in being the last assignment because it was intended for the students to design a teacher webpage and incorporate all the assignments leading up to this one.  I really liked this activity because it not only allowed me to begin the process of behaving as a teacher, but it allowed me to be proud of the accomplishments and have major credibility to my overall identity as a teacher.  I plan on using this Portfolio as a guideline to when I do become a teacher and create a high valued professional webpage that reflects me as a teacher.  As a matter of fact, speaking of my porfoltio, all these assignments could be seen through my portfolio.
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       http://mrgutierrezawesomeness.weebly.com

Overall, my experience in this class was amazing.  Although I could have gave it more of my time and have tried a little harder to complete the assignments on time, the experience was something I really needed.  As a student who didn't know much about technology and was bias about integrating them in to the classroom, I now know that there is much more to learn from technology, that is not becoming obsolete anytime soon, and that it is important to not only us but for the students.  The students are growing up in a generation where technology is becoming more a requirement, versus the day in which technology was used seldom and only as a reward.  By integrating technology, enhancing our digital identity, and practicing more and more with these web tools, the possibilities of creating lesson plans to engage all students and achieve a high success rate becomes endless!  Besides, we need technology! What are we, Neanderthals?  

Like Patrick Star, from the original nickelodeon series Spongebob, once said: 

And now here is a video demonstrating how far we have come since these "caveman" times: