May 04 2009
Synthesis Reflection
- 1-2 paragraph précis of flight path (5)
Being my sixth MET course I felt fairly competent coming into ETEC 565. I had had the opportunity to look at and experience a variety of tech tools but this was mainly done as an aside to the course work that we were assigned. In this course I was given the opportunity to examine and play with a very wide variety of tools and to think about the use of the tools themselves in terms of my practice as an educator. I love practical learning and the chance to move from the theoretical to the practical has been a refreshing one. As such, this course has been quite enjoyable. Perhaps the aspect of this course that I most eagerly anticipated was the chance to learn to work within the Moodle LMS. When I began I did not have a clear vision for how this would benefit me in a F2F learning situation but I was eager to learn. What I found was a tool that could absolutely support my students’ learning in a classroom situation. The open-source nature of the product itself definitely fits in well with my school district’s budget. Unlike my experience with Moodle I have not really changed my opinions about social networking at this point. While I can now see a variety of benefits of many asynchronous and synchronous tools on the net for educational purposes I am still not sold on these tools for personal use.
The support of my colleagues has proven the most helpful in this course. There were a variety of levels of experience within our community of learners and many were very gracious in sharing their skills. With their help and with my own journey through the toolkit activities I have achieved my goals for this course and plan to take what I have learned and help to move my own school district forward as it integrates more technology into the curriculum.
- Reflection on toolkit experience overall (5)
My experiences with the toolkit were very beneficial and I was able to get a chance to try out almost all of them. I would have preferred that they not be an assessment piece however. When I began with them, and didn’t see that they were to be assessed, I found “playing” with them was very relaxing and quite a bit of fun. I knew I was learning but didn’t feel a need to demonstrate it or talk about it. I have had some previous experience working with wikis and blogs but the toolkit allowed me to think more about the tool and its applications for my classroom rather than just using it. The LMS toolkit and, in fact, the whole Moodle experience was completely new to me. The toolkit instructions were very clear and I felt pretty good about using Moodle once I completed it. Sometimes reality is a delayed reaction.
The LMS toolkit in particular caused me to focus on the cost aspect of tools for use in my district. There is not likely to be any big purchases in any department in the next few years as enrollment declines so open-source products are going to be the only way to go. As a result, the comparison of the two LMSs was fairly easy for me. This time reality was on the ball.
I have individual reflective pieces for each of the toolkit experiences that I had so will not repeat them here. I am much more interested in the process as it happened anyway and not the “tidied up” version after the fact as I feel that they provide an interesting snapshot of my learning as the course progressed. Perhaps most impactful was the toolkit on website creation. I have had a website for several years and only just now find that it “sucks”! Now I know what I will be doing in August.
I do want to give particular mention to my experience with WordPress in this course. I am not a natural “blogger” but have grown to appreciate the ability to see where I was at a certain point. I am naturally a very candid person and this is usually evident in my writing. I find that I only enjoy reading the blog entries of people who are similarly candid about their challenges and opinions. I enjoy hearing actual emotion in people’s blog and discussion entries and quickly become bored with politically (or academically!) correct verbiage. The experience creating an eportfolio in WordPress is something that will definitely serve to inform my practice as I move forward with technology integration in my district.
- Apply SECTIONS model to self-assess your portfolio (Bates & Poole, 2003 )
S – Students:
For me the use of an eportfolio format was a good tool to demonstrate learning. As a graduate student it was entirely appropriate to create a collection of tools and experiences that reflect my journey in ETEC 565. I can see using this tool from grade 3 and up in the classroom.
E – Ease of use and reliability:
WordPress was extremely easy to use and is constantly being updated and upgraded. There is a great deal of support on the WordPress forum to address any potential issues and it appears to be very reliable. The ability for it be hosted through your own server or through WordPress.com makes it highly accessible.
C – Costs:
As an open-source application WordPress was an excellent choice for cash-strapped school districts (and graduate students!) to use. This fact makes it much easier for a classroom teacher to utilize and thereby also increases its accessibility.
T – Teaching and learning:
Many of my students will not have created their own blog space. It would be beneficial to create a class blog-space that students can learn to navigate around first. This will be helpful in demonstrating the capabilities of the blog. Students will also need to be briefed on copyright issues and digital literacy will have to be a common theme in discussions around blog usage. Next students can progress to their own blog with a guided instruction format for the basic shell. Additions to the basic format should be allowed to encourage adaptation and extension for students with a variety of learning needs but should be approved by the classroom teacher.
I – Interactivity:
WordPress is highly interactive and updates for the user are frequently provided on the WordPress home page. Users can easily add RSS feeds, links to social networking and other sites, Snapshot tools for links, a variety of multi-media and polls. Comments on blogs are easily made and can be displayed in a variety of formats as chosen by the blog’s host.
O – Organizational issues:
Issues around access to the blog sites will need to be dealt with on a district level. Will they be blocked to non-members and what limitations will this pose on the use of the blog? Support issues should also be addressed. My district requires that blogs are hosted on the school’s website. Will it be possible to convince them to allow teachers to use different blogging tools as we move forward with tech integration? An uphill battle.
N – Novelty:
The technology involved in blogging is not really new anymore. It has not been widely used in elementary education so, in that regard, it retains a great deal of novelty affect. Teachers I have discussed blogging with at this level are very interested in its use and will be more prevalent in the elementary classroom in the next couple of years.
S – Speed:
Changes to information on the blog site are instantaneous. As a web-based application they can be made from anywhere with internet access. Editing and deleting information is easily accomplished and provide that instant gratification my students need!
- Describe steps for you, in terms of your practice in educational technology (5)
My immediate work in this regard involves helping my district’s technology department put on a summer Tech Camp (http://touchngo.sd79.bc.ca/index.html). I will be helping to facilitate the workshops as they run even though there are many of them that I feel that I would be more than capable of running. As I am fairly new to this district I am looking forward to getting involved at this level and having an opportunity to demonstrate some of my skills.
More generally, I am looking forward to focusing on the process of teaching. During my time in the MET program I have been working in short duration contracts and supplementing that with work as a TOC. I eagerly anticipate finishing the program and getting down to the real work of teaching with the new skills and knowledge that I have acquired throughout this program. I am torn in terms of my career about a decision to move to a position at the district level in the technology department. I know that I will have the skill set to do so and would enjoy helping to propel my district forward in this regard but I really want to do some amazing things with my own students. At this point I think that I will stick with the classroom and involve myself in the district doing Pro-D for now. I feel that there is a lot of work to be done in demonstrating what is possible in the elementary classroom in terms of learning through technology.
I am also interested in possibly doing some work in distributed learning and have been investigating opportunities in this area.
References
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.