Saturday, April 23, 2011

Final Course Reflection

Reflection on the Course

When I reflect upon the last eight weeks of this course, I feel as though the information I have learned has put me into a completely different place, changing my understanding of the relationship between technology and my instruction dramatically. Rather than seeing what I have learned as requiring a complete change in my instruction, I have taken my own methods and integrated them with the new ideas, strategies and technology to help all students reach their full potential (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b). Differentiation involves every aspect of the classroom from the teacher, the content and the students themselves. As such I have identified three main areas of change utilizing technology to bring change to my classroom immediately and in the future.

The first change I plan to implement is to look at both my instruction and the technology in my classroom more critically, with the entire classroom of students in mind. As such the first step I will take is to utilize technology to learn about my students, including their interests, prior knowledge and their readiness levels. As I have learned through this class there are a variety of surveys and questionnaires available online that can be implemented quickly and easily in my classroom with the results being recorded online for convenience. This allows me to use the technology available within my own school to learn more about my students and thus plan my instruction to meet their needs. Using what I have learned, I will stop building lessons and instruction without the needs of my students in mind rather changing the content, process and product to offer something for everyone in my classroom. As most of the surveys are short I will have little difficulty finding 10 or 15 minutes for the students to take the surveys with the review of the information being made easy by the technology itself. The more time I am able to invest in my students both in instruction and learning about them as individuals, the large the gains will be later in my class and later in their lives (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009a). We know that students learn differently, as a teacher I must find out what makes them who they are and use it to meat their needs providing solid

Secondly, I plan to simply offer more opportunities in my classroom to use the technology we already have and seek to find new methods of bringing technology into my instruction (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b). As I have stated in the past, we have been fortunate in regards to the availability of technology in both the school and the classroom as we have many great resources. However, throughout this course I have come to the understanding that I have not been using the available technology to its full potential. With the information I have learned about my students providing a starting place I can begin to provide various instructional methods to help all of my students achieve success. I have come to the understanding that I do not need to always control each step within my classroom but rather allow for different opportunities for flexibility throughout my instruction. I can provide the main topic and establish basic guidelines then let my students guide their own learning, discovering the content on their own and comprehending the information on a much deeper level. I foresee lessons in the future including Webquests, Blogs, Wiki’s and even websites, helping students show what they have learned in a variety of methods. I can use what I have learned when creating my own Blog and Wiki to model for the students how to create these products providing the basics for instruction then facilitate the overall learning process. Overall, I feel I may have lacked both the confidence and even the knowledge previously to successfully provide differentiation in my classroom and options to my students. This feeling has changed to one of eagerness and I am now looking for ways to bring all of the technology I have at my disposal into my lessons in a variety of different ways. Once I begin to relinquish some of the overall control of the classroom, I have established an environment where students will feel free to learn and try regardless of their learning needs. I need to only provide students with the opportunity to learn and grow within my classroom.

Lastly, I plan to continuously expand my own learning and mindset in relation to my students (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b). This can be accomplished through continued professional development with the Internet and the group Blog we created providing excellent resources for my growth. Technology has provided a way for a large amount of information to be available directly at my fingertips. Through continued work I can continue to learn new strategies and ideas guiding my own learning. The changes shown in instruction, strategies and even thinking about my students will not happen over night but rather over time building on my successes in the classroom and learning from the technology and lessons that do not work. I now see the large connections between my student’s success in the classroom and the variety of strategies as well as realistic technology usage to offer opportunity and make instruction more realistic. Previous to this class, I saw differentiation as just teaching the material in a way that offered something for the visual, the auditory and kinesthetic learner in my classroom (Smith & Throne, 2007). What I have learned is that differentiation is so much more, with technology allowing a way to accommodate all of the various learners in my classroom expanding my own learning and by extension the overall experience my students have in my class.

Overall, I see my entire classroom and methodology in a new light with more hope and possibilities available for my students. Differentiation combined with technology provides the advantage of having a large amount of ways to find, manipulate and present content within the twenty-first century classroom. Technology, though not a single fix all to the classroom, will provide the opportunity for students to thrive in my content area (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b). Using what I have learned from this course, both through an examination of our resources and also in practice I am better prepared to meet the needs of my all of my students in my classroom.

References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009a). Managing the differentiated classroom. [DVD}. Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore, MD.: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009b). Putting it all together. [DVD}. Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore, MD.: Author.

Smith, G., & Throne, S. (2007). Differentiating instruction with technology in K-5 classrooms. Belmont, CA: International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

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