As an educator I I work in a k-12 school, but despite that, I connected with the Nel, Carstens, and Dreyer article “Edcucational Technologies: A classification and evaluation” about the challenges facing implementing technology at the tertiary level. The school I work at in a small, isolated, rural community has a respectable budget but not much desire to implement technology in education. When I arrived the school had a computer lab, two projectors and a smart board that is never used, due to the political climate, and had been sitting unplugged in a corner for years. I connected with this article because of it’s description of “Lone Ranger” teachers, and that while the use of technology is encouraged, there simply isn’t that network of support to aid in developing programs and combining its use. The variety of technologies available and the daunting process of sifting though and finding those that will best work for your classroom and school culture can be daunting. Nel, Carstens, and Dreyer provide a framework for assessing and selecting these technologies. As someone who has tried and discarded many programs a selection process would be very helpful. For me creating a flight path for this course is about making things easier to save time. I want to be able to better choose technologies, better assess work, and spend less time struggling with making technology work the way I need it to.

The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Teachers’ first standard, that teachers should facilitate student learning and creativity, I found to embody my strengths as a teacher. I have very small humanities class sizes (2-8 students)  which allows me to have a different sort of teaching. For the most part our classes are discussions where we view media, connect with personal experiences and express that in a product. I generally suggest method for students to present their learning but am open to their suggestions. We live in an isolated community and technology allows us to be involved in issues that are important but not reflected locally. Technology allows for students to be engaged in a greater global dialogue through writing articles online, communicating with students in other schools, and posting comments or essays challenging opinions. In that way their field of influence becomes much broader.  We primarily use moodle as a LMS for these classes and I am eager to explore it more through this course as it is my first year using the platform.

I do find that being more open to student choice and variety of expression make assignments more difficult to assess. Which is why the NETS’s second standard, design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, struck me as something to work towards.  For instance, my class is currently co-writing next year’s Christmas play on google docs. We brainstormed together and I modeled structure and format by writing the first scene. Everyone was assigned a scene or two to write and then worked to edit the other scenes. No names were used as I wanted it to be a collaborative creation rather than having them take ownership over parts of it. In the past I’ve had students give themselves grades and explain why they deserved them but I wonder if there couldn’t be a better way to assess a project like this? I would like to experiment with different methods of assessment and perhaps to develop a few that I can bring into my practice.

In reflecting on what I would like to take out of this class, assessment strategies in the digital world would definitely be my focus, however there are other things I would like to strengthen in my own practice. Chickering and Gamson describe seven principals for good practice. From those took away a few things I could improve upon. They state that go practice “develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.” This is something I try to do, as evidenced by the co-writing project I have mentioned. The internet provides wonderful opportunities for working together, forming bonds, which is an excellent skill for the workplace. Again though I wonder how to assess projects fairly when they are shared between several students and how to ensure a more fair distribution of work. In addition, I wonder how to make sure I am communicating high expectations, their 6th principal, when projects and their accompanying rubics are left purposefully vague to cover a wide range of platforms. How do you adequately assess the depth of insight as a descriptor?
In any case, I feel like in this world of changing technologies and ideas, we’re all learning together to see what works best in different communities and with different classroom dynamics. The degree to which I incorporate technology is of course reliant on the school climate and technological infrastructure. Since I’ve arrived in the school, we’ve managed to procure a 3d printer, laptops for every student, and I have a new smart board projector sitting in the office waiting to be set up! Our principal is very supportive if we take the initiative. By taking the initiative to use more technologically facilitate and inspired teaching we are also helping to encourage technology use in the school. I am always open to discussing and sharing techniques with other teachers and luckily in a small school, people are very aware of what is happening in other classrooms. I look forward to sharing the inspiration from this course with other faculty members in my school.