Week 14 Reflections on the Learning Experiences of Technology Exploration

Do you see the light on the other end of the tunnel?
How can you use technology to facilitate students’ learning?
How can we enhance our own careers...?
(Picture of Raquette Lake taken by Dr. Shi on October 22, 2005)

To do this week

I. Finish up Project # 8 Reflections (the content in Project # 8 is the same as the following)

Assignment: Near the end of the semester, you are to write a one-page summary of your reflections on the entire course, on the learning process of the whole journey of EDU 314: Teaching with Computers in Elementary and Secondary Schools (you can write more for sure!). Design a web page for this and link it to your ePortfolio and publish it. These will be graded for completeness, relevancy, originality, and coherence.

Purpose: The project is designed to encourage you to examine your own experiences as learners in this chron long but informationally short journey of technology exploration. As a future teacher, few questions are of greater intellectual and practical importance than the question of your understanding of how you learn and how influences in the past have made you who you are now, as well as how your learning and experiences will change you in the future.

Project Ideas: The reflections should take the form of a narrative (like story-telling). You can choose to use any other innovative styles as long as there are narrative components of your own. Avoid surface-level reflections; instead, try to reach deep on your reflections in this task. Here are some ideas for you to write up the reflections:

1. Do you think you have grown as a result of this course? If so, in what ways? What are the technical skills that you have picked up from the course? Which tools, resources, or systems are you now pretty comfortable with? Which ones do you really want to know but have yet not mastered?

2. What was important in this course? What did you learn from this course? In addition, how will this course help or not help you in your future teaching?

3. What are some of the exciting experiences and what are some of the frustrations you have experienced here?

4. We have used both teamwork and individual work for the course projects. Describe a scenario where you work by yourself and a scenario where you work with peers in this course. From your perspectives, which way is more helpful to you in terms of your learning?

5. Is working in small groups powerful or not? How did you exchange ideas with others in this course? For what purpose? What types of projects and/or group work can be used in your own future teaching?? How might groups work in your future classrooms? How might groups not work?? What can people do to avoid problems or stressful group situations?

6. How can you create small groups of teams using different forms of technology for their learning projects - web design, PowerPoint, WebQuest web, etc.? How might you assign roles and make your students feel individually responsible? How will you assign grades for small groups, etc?
   
   Some more food for thought - have a quick peek at the points below - think about them but do not force yourself to give an answer. You can skip the issues below if you have yet to think about your overall vision or plan.

7. Do you have a vision related to the use of educational technology in the classroom? Do you have a plan? What do you want your students to accomplish with educational technology?

8. What would be thoughtful use of technology in schools? What does it look like? What does it mean to integrate technology? How might you organize the use of different tools in an integrated fashion?

9. What specific tools did you learn that relate to your teaching philosophy? Do you even have a teaching philosophy?

10. How might you share your accomplishments with others in technology integration when you are a teacher?

Technical Requirements

• Open

Content Requirements

• Your thoughtful reflection should be at least one page or 500 words.?

Evaluation

Below 3 points Reflections was surface-level or skin-deep, not well-organized,?the student failed to put much thought into it. Notable lack of professional polish and difficult to make sense of what the student is saying.

3-4 points Reflections include some of the suggested ideas, but not much in terms of deep personal thoughts. Lack of? professional polish and coherent reflection.

4-5 points There are narratives in the Reflections telling the stories of your own. Professionally polished and coherent. Some innovation embedded in the reflection.

6 points Reflections are very comprehensive, deep. The project was well-organized? and was in excellent form with high professional polish.? Rich sense of innovativeness and technology integration is felt.

II. Start to wrap up the whole ePortfolio