Denouement is derived from the Old French word for desnouer, “to untie”, from nodus, Latin for “knot”.  Therefore, denouement serves as the unraveling of the conflicts in the conclusion of the story.  If the play was a tragedy, the denouement would lead to a catastrophe which leads the protagonist to being worse off than at the beginning.  If the play was a comedy, the denouement would result in the protagonist being better off than at the beginning.

This is the final Act of my journey in the MET program.  At this point, I am becoming comfortable with the educational technologies that I include in my own classroom.  The artifacts discussed here are ones that reflect the foundations and theories that have developed my own understanding of this field of study.  This denouement brings together my growth as an educator and learner of educational technology.

In ETEC 532, I developed an artifact, a video named Digitized Meaning, that connected the use of technology to the classroom.  As a result, the discussion explored the problems that technology brings to learning that educators need to keep in mind when utilizing technology for educational means.  Teachers often bring a “toolkit” to class in order to help students, but this “toolkit” has changed since the introduction of technology.  Students have now begun to learn digital literacy in order to build a set of skills needed for the 21st Century workplace: problem-solving, communication, and ability to navigate and adapt to changing circumstance (both independently and collectively).  Therefore, could the arts and humanities classroom be taught the same with the new demands of technology and of the new 21st Century learner?  With these new changes, the meaning, during the learning process, can change as well.  Therefore, it is important for the educator to not only look specifically at the needs of the student, but also form a discussion on meaning presented between the pixels.  In the accompanying final paper to this video, Reading between the Pixels: Looking at the Change of Meaning Through Digitization, I explored how meaning changes when altered in digitized form in the following mediums: narrative, photography, and social media.  With these problems and conflicts that I explored as a result of the clash between technology and the traditional classroom, I will continue to pursue and reflect on these conflicts to continue to develop a discussion with colleagues of the nature of technology and its future role in our students’ lives.

ETEC 565: various tools