Meta-reflection

I have to admit, that at the beginning of this course, I had my doubts. I was born in 1990, and 2 years later, the Internet was available to consumers. I do not remember a time when there was not a computer in my household. I’ve never really not been around technology, and I’ve always been very logical and very good at figuring it out. When I heard that this course was basically technology for educators, I admit that I sort of wrote it off as a bunch of stuff I already knew with the SmartBoard thrown in. Now, I admit I was wrong.

I felt like this course was a great model of differentiation. I started the course confident with my abilities in technology, sort of “Technologically Gifted” and I felt that the expectations were proportional to our ability for most of the assignments, and that I was able to use what I already knew to learn new things about technology in the classroom. Nobody was penalized for their inexperience or held back by their experience.

I think the project that will be the most useful is probably the interactive whiteboard project. While I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a classroom using an interactive whiteboard, I really appreciated the opportunity to learn this technology hands on and get to use it. There were a few hassles along the way, but in the end I felt I had created a very effective lesson and presentation.

I also feel that my biggest change throughout this class was likely my perspective of technology in the classroom. I’ve always thought that technology has a place in the classroom, and now I feel even surer of that. I do, however recognize an aspect that I had not thought of before. Yes, these kids may come in already knowing how to use computers or iPads, or whatever future technology awaits us, but our job isn’t to teach students how to use technology. Rather, our job is to teach students how to use this technology to learn. We can do this with many of the resources we learned about throughout this course. I think I came in expecting to learn about technology, but really I learned how to teach others about technology and using technology. 

Looking back at my previous posts, I feel that my goal from the beginning was to have a blog entry each week that would be on a subject different from the other class blogs, but taking the perspective of the class. In that sense I think I definitely succeeded. I felt that having that goal in mind challenged me beyond the expectations of the assignment, and I learned a lot of interesting things researching some of these topics!

I guess to close I’ll do what I do best, and write a sonnet about it!

As this summer session draws to an end,

I reflect on what I’ve learned in this class.

I thought we’d learn how an email does send,

But we focused on much more complex tasks!

I thought myself a tech know-it-all,

But still this course really helped me to learn

From writing on a class Edmodo wall

To a Flat Classroom grant trying to earn

Who knows if I'll ever have a smart board?

but I think that I'm prepared to use one!

Not on a level to win an award,

but my class certainly would have some fun 

Well, as you can see, this class is now done,

but on Monday we start another one!