In my flight path, I thought a great deal about who I am as a teacher and how I want students to learn in my classroom. I realized that I want students to gain a deep and thorough understanding of each topic. In order to fulfill that goal, I needed to find ways to use technology to enhance my teaching practice so that the use of technology “adds depth to lessons and opens doors to new experiences” (MacLellan, 2011). Although this is a long term goal that I will be striving to improve upon for my entire career, ETEC 565 gave me the opportunity to move closer to achieving it. In this course, I was able to explore new techniques that I can apply in my class to allow my students to deepen their learning. Through the exploration of the many online tools, I now have a better idea of what tools are right for what job. I have expanded my repertoire of technology knowledge which, in turn, has allowed me to expand my ability to teach effectively.
A more short term goal that I mentioned in my flight path was to study assessment and how it can be used as a tool to promote learning. In this course, I had the opportunity to read “Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Student Learning” by Gibbs and Simpson (2004). I found myself resonating strongly with their ideas about what student assessment is and how it should be used in the classroom. Their assertion that assessment should encourage and inform student learning fits with one of the core educational values that I mentioned in my Flight Path. I believe that students should leave my class with knowledge that will stay with them throughout their lifetimes. I think that lifelong knowledge is more important than achieving a fleeting surface understanding that allows a student to do well on a single test. My experiences with the assessment features in Moodle allowed me to reflect on the Gibbs and Simpson (2004) article and work to apply their principles to the quiz that I created. Applying the knowledge that I gained from the readings allowed me to internalize and solidify my understanding of the principles so that I can continue to use this knowledge when I am creating future assessments for my students.
Another goal that I mentioned in my Flight Path was a goal to increase my knowledge of cooperative learning techniques and explore ways to use technology to differentiate learning. The eLearning toolkit gave me many opportunities to further this goal. The toolkit was a great starting point for learning about wikis, the terms of use for different social software sites, and synchronous communication tools. One area of the toolkit, exploring blogs, really caught my attention. In the past, I had seen both good and bad aspects of student blogging and been a bit unsure about how to safely implement blogging in my classroom. Now, I am still a bit unclear about how to handle inappropriate comments from outside people, but after reading about schools that effectively use blogging in “Blogging: In Their Own Words” (Fisch, 2007), I feel like I want to explore blogging further and try it with my class next year. My plan is to use the eLearning toolkit activity and the additional information in Module 5 of this course as a starting point to create a weekly blogging activity for my students for next year.
Overall, ETEC 565 has been a positive experience for me. I did encounter some frustration with the general layout of the course and had to adapt to a slightly different learning method than I am comfortable with. I know that I, as a learner, like to maintain a specific focus throughout a course. I like to immerse myself deeply into one topic until I am completely familiar with it. The layout of this course encouraged an exploration of many different ways to apply technology and as such, it split my focus. However, the learning that I experienced was worth the cognitive dissonance that I encountered during the process. Although the experience was a bit frustrating to me at times, I think that expanding my knowledge base to include many new tools to effectively use technology will now allow me to concentrate my energy on the ones that will work best for my teaching style. In looking at the positive and negative aspects of many different technologies, I now have a broader perspective and a better grasp of what tools will work best for myself and my students in a given learning situation.
My experience in this course has allowed me to feel more comfortable with blogging and I now feel like I am ready to smoothly implement the weekly blogging activity mentioned earlier. I have also gained the confidence to branch out and explore other technologies. I will continue forward with my intention of exploring the affordances of web cams in the classroom but I will now have a better understanding of how to create effective lessons and anticipate problems before they happen so that I can create effective solutions without exposing my students to uncomfortable situations. Although it hasn’t always been easy, I have appreciated the learning that I gained in this course. I can now benefit by applying my new knowledge directly to my teaching practice.
References
Fisch, K. (2007). “Blogging: In Their Own Words,”The Fischbowl. Accessed online Aug. 2, 2011. http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/06/blogging-in-their-own-words.html
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Retrieved on June 27 from
http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf