Reflection 8

I cannot believe the end of this semester is here. It's been a wonderful eight weeks of learning a subject matter that I find extremely interesting and never a dull moment.
The biggest impact on me has been the knowledge that has been shared by my classmates. It's awesome to be in the company of individuals who are open-minded and freely share what's in their heart.
I hope I can change the mind-set of teachers I work with and gear them towards using technology. Many are veteran teachers, I'm afraid to admit, who are not comfortable with change.
My "aha" moment would be when I triumphantly succeeded in working with Jing! I was very hesitant at first to use the software, thinking I would not understand it and make it work. But the Internet is a marvelous tool, not to mention YouTube with their many videos on how-tos.
I hope to continue my class blog, Dr. W, as a means to measure my growth in educational technology. I hope to experience and learn a new technology frequently and document it.
Thank you, Dr. W, for a great course and an awesome learning experience.
Hasta la proxima!

Reflection 7

For this week’s assignment on creating a lesson/training plan that incorporates technology, I decided to create a lesson on collaborating on a Google Docs Presentation. The lesson is geared towards the teachers I work with at my district. Each teacher will be asked to create a slide for their program area on Google Docs Presentations. I’m envisioning the final product will be used as a recruiting tool for our department. I began the Presentation, creating the title page and a sample slide. I used Jing to record a video of the instructions, uploaded it to Screencast.com and embedded the code given by Screencast into my blog’s HTML screen. I reduced the size of the video screen so that it would better fit in the blog screen. Creating the assignment in Jing was a challenge for me as this was the first time I used Jing.  I didn’t realize Jing recorded sound as well.  Surprisingly, Jing was simple to use and fun to work with. 

Pretty impressive data is on the videos, and surely I don’t want to be part of the 63% not using technology to help our students of the 21^st century. I feel students can improve learning by using technology to help master content. Technology makes learning fun and keeps the students motivated and interested and returning for more. But technology can be intimidating especially for the novice digital learner.

I attended a training this week on the Promethean Board. Most of our district classrooms have one. My training was not on how to use the Board but what to look for in a teacher’s lesson to ensure he/she is using the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Not an easy feat but a challenging one. A PowerPoint presentation with slides containing bullets is not enough for learning anymore.  It’s about questioning the student’s prior knowledge on the subject and then helping the students learn to compare, contrast, define, analyze, create, all the while using the Board to build on this knowledge.  The Board is powerful. The Board is technology. Technology is powerful. But we need to know how to use technology to unleash its power.  After watching the videos, I know I need to improve my knowledge of technology and feel confident about using it. Courses I undergo in this master’s program will help me achieve this, making me better prepared to help improve student learning. 

Below is my tech project.