My ETEC 565 Flight Path
May 2011
The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.~Walter Raleigh
Technology is but a tool that is fast becoming the heart of our classrooms. The teacher is the soul of the classroom. What does it take to fly? It requires financial investment, sound equipment and tools, and a flight instructor. It requires the learner to log many hours of on ground and in flight practice. The parallels are obvious. I have spent the money, surrounded myself with sound equipment and tools, attended professional development, and logged many hours learning to use the equipment and tools. But have I yet to bring soul to technology use in the classroom?
I have owned a personal computer since 1988. I word-processed and I played games. My students word-processed and played games. When I learned how to create a power point, wiki, googledoc, so too then did my students. I developed effective Internet search skills and then enabled my students to do the same. It was not till writing this flight plan that I realized the parallel between my learning and theirs. Effective and purposeful use of technology has only just begun to happen in my teaching environments during the past year and a half (during my time spent with MET). I realized that I facilitate purposeful learning with technology after I have engaged in the same.
I have goals for this course and MET in general. I wish to continue to learn of and use technologies that will support my learning, my teaching, and my facilitation of teachers’ learning. I wish to “design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments” as well as “model digital age work and learning” (ISTE, 2008). The seven principles of good learning (Chickering and Gamson, 1987) if applied to the instruction of our future and current teachers may then be incorporated by them. It is my hope that this will inspire and give them reason to do the same in their classrooms.
I want to better make use of the Learning Management System that I currently use to deliver a math methods course. It is my hope that my course will become a blend of face-to-face and online learning. I hope to take the best of activities, tools, and techniques from the MET courses and incorporate them into my practice. I hope to be asked during my MET experience to demonstrate my learning in ways that incorporate technology. Then I will better be able to do the same for my students and teachers.
To master purposeful use of technologies, I need to be engaged in learning that incorporates them. It has been said that we teach the way we were taught. It is a large burden that I place on the MET instructors as I look to them to teach and facilitate in the way that I should be teaching and facilitating 21st century learners and their teachers.
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. AAHE Bulletin. Retrieved from
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
International Society for Technology in Education (2008). NETS for teachers 2008. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx