- In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills as a professional teacher? I have learned how to create a wiki, blog, and podcast to use for educational purposes. I learned many of the technical skills related to the creation of the above, such as editing skills, how to add images and text, and how to format. I've also learned a few things from the course discussions, such as Sparknotes (a great online technological resource for students), Fugleflicks (a great podcast resource site for art educators), and have explored many different blogs that I will continue to use for professional development resources and general knowledge resource.
- In what ways have you deepened your knowledge of the teaching and learning process? I have learned about the importance of incorporating the 21st century skills into daily content lessons. I have learned what the 21st century skills are and how to utilize them in the classroom in various ways. The teacher now-a-days needs to become more of a facilitator and source of support and knowledge for students. He/she needs to utilize 21st century skills and technology in the teaching of content. Many opportunities need to be presented to students, so that students become more self-directed and in charge of their own learning. We need to encourage, challenge, and provide opportunities for our students to become more engaged in the learning process by offering them fun, educational activities that involve technology and learning content skills.
- In what ways have you changed your perspective from being teacher-centered to learner-centered? I feel that in most of my lessons I provide learner-centered activities and projects. My perspective has not really changed that much. I never lecture my students and often offer many collaborative, self-directed art projects. I have always looked to my students for inspiration, new ideas, and their input for designing and implementing various content lessons. Usually I'm only their for direction, support, as a guide, and director. I totally believe that learning should be learner-centered. If we don't look at our students as sources of new information and use their interests and expertise in technology in the classroom, we lose their interest and when we lose their interest, our hard work and their learning is not successful.
- In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement? I will continue to take professional development classes in technology. This summer the Tri-County Educational Service Center, which services our school district, is offering 10+ free classes for teachers on a variety of educational topics, including many in different classroom technology skills and programs. I am also helping our district technology director with taking apart the old computers and she is teaching me the external and internal parts of a computer. She has many years of technology experience and she is teaching me a lot about technology, technology problem solving skills, and how to use many technology resources in my classroom. She is a good friend of mine! I am constantly reading and looking for ways to integrate new technologies and online resources into my content lessons. Every time I teach a lesson, I try to add new technology resources to it to increase student achievement and motivation.
- Set two long-term goals (within two years) for transforming your classroom environment by which you may have to overcome institutional or systemic obstacles in order to achieve them. How do you plan to accomplish these goals? One of my goals for next school year is to teach content to each grade level that I teach using Jumpstart Artist computer software. This year our PTO (parent-teacher organization) purchased this program for all of our computer lab computers. I have a plan to sequentially teach content using this fun educational software starting in grade 1 and progressing each year through grade 4. One obstacle that I've faced this year is scheduling the lab. I'm going to overcome this obstacle by teaching in the lab one grade level at a time. For example, only 1st grade in September, 2nd grade in November, 3rd in March, and 4th in May. By scheduling the lab only one grade level at a time, it may reduce the problems that I've faced trying to schedule grades 1-3 in one month. Another goal is to utilize blogs, wikis, and podcasts in my lessons next year when the opportunity arises. I'm going to look at each content lesson and try my best to integrate these technology resources into the lessons. I'm definitely going to teach my high school Art 1 class how to develop a collaborative wiki to research and provide information on various artists to share with the class.
Additional reflection/comments: I really enjoyed the discussion aspect of this class. I enjoyed reading, reflecting, and commenting each week on various topics. Reading other people's posts and sharing, discussing, and adding to the discussion was great and gave me a lot of knowledge and new information from my peers in this class.
I feel that my technology and knowledge has grown from my first week of this class till now. I've learned many new things and how to integrate them into my classroom and the importance of integrating them into my classroom.
I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot! Thanks, Becky DePuy
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