Final Course Reflection

Computers in Education, IT 645, provided a broad survey of the uses of technology in education along with the opportunity to apply many specific techniques and skills for implementing technology to support learning and classroom management. This class was challenging in terms of the time commitment and the sheer number of different assignments. However, with a subject matter as broad as technology in education, the comprehensive nature of the course is understandable. At the conclusion of this course I can say with certainty that I gained a great appreciation for how and why technology should be one of the most important tools in virtually any classroom. The educational establishment is telling teachers across the nation that education technology literacy is essential for all educators and that fluency in all manner of information technology a required skill for students and teachers alike.

Since education is essentially a communicative process, I came to a greater understanding of communication in terms of messages sent and received while being filtered and acted upon by the sender, the recipient and the environment. I learned many ways that technology can be used in support of learning objectives but only after the objectives have been carefully articulated and the lessons outlined. Then, having a repertoire of technology media skills and tools at my disposal, the appropriate strategy can be selected based on the learners’ characteristics and needs.

A positive side of the e-text is the wealth of resources supplied with it. The podcasts contained interesting comments and personal experiences that related to the content of the text. However, I found it difficult to retain information from the podcast. Perhaps if the audio was accompanied by a slideshow or video it would facilitate assimilation of the information – or perhaps I am just not an auditory learner. The video clips, on the other hand, were a very useful adjunct to the text. Seeing and hearing how real teachers and students deal with technology in the classroom, observing how it is implemented, noting how it supports learning, all this is very clearly depicted in the video clips, and key terms and concepts are highlighted in the text box next to the video. I think it would have been an interesting exercise to blog about our reactions to some of the videos. Actually, I do use videos in my GED class because they add interest and variety to my class and offer authentic visuals as well as expert viewpoints.

I did enjoy creating my own blog. It was surprisingly easy to post articles, link files, and include photographs and graphics. The ability to receive comments from readers adds an interesting twist. I do believe I would use blogs in my own teaching, depending on the subject. I would want to strongly encourage greater depth and insight in the comments. This shows that the reader thoroughly read, comprehended, and extended the ideas in the original post. This is what I tried to do in my comments.

The hands-on projects provided a framework for applying the concepts learned by reading the text. These activities made the concepts real to me as I imagined how each technique would be used in my very own classroom. I felt the activities were the very best part of the course.

Hasn’t every teacher had to create a flyer for something in his or her first year of teaching? It might be a club meeting, tutoring schedule, parent meeting, open house. Making the flyer attractive and professional-looking portrays the quality and care that will go into the event being advertised, thus building the teacher’s aura of competence. This is a skill every teacher should have.

Excel is a versatile application with many uses in the classroom. As a classroom teacher, I used it for my grade book and for making seating charts and other classroom helps. Until I did the progress chart assignment, I had not experimented with the graphing tools on Excel. However, I really appreciate the usefulness of graphs for visual portrayals of data, and the Excel graphs of class grades turned out beautiful with the color schemes and shading of Excel 2007. I think this is a skill I could even teach students in a math class. They could collect data and use Excel to make various types of colorful graphs to print and display in the classroom.

PowerPoint is probably my all-time favorite application. I use it in so many ways in and out of the classroom. Creating a quiz with PowerPoint was fun. However, the main way I use PowerPoint in the classroom is as an accompaniment to lecture. For example, when studying American history, I use a PowerPoint slide show to display key terms and dates, and show illustrations, charts, and images of real documents and artifacts. All these visual elements add to the learning experience by stimulating interest and increasing retention.

The web tools assignments illustrate the abundance of resources that can be found on the internet. The Rubistar website is a nice way to ensure that rubrics are meaningful and consistent. A website for creating puzzles offers a quick way to create fun activities to reinforce learning. In addition, the puzzles can be stored for future use and modified. I think I could easily form a habit to use the test-maker website if I taught social studies or science. Having good templates for matching, short answer, and multiple choice quizzes is quite handy.

Making a movie was the most unfamiliar of all the assignments. I knew very little about Windows Moviemaker going into this assignment. I was not totally satisfied with how the application worked. For example, I was not able to figure out how to narrate the show. Instead, I recorded a separate audio file and inserted it into the movie. Then I adjusted the timing of the slides to go with the spoken word. After playing with the titles feature of Moviemaker, I decided to abandon that method and use PowerPoint slides (converted to jpeg format) instead. Admittedly, I may not have been using the software correctly. This is the one hands-on tool I am not quite sure I would use in a classroom. I am open to suggestions, though.

Trackstar is a fantastic tool, and I was glad to find out about it. Not only can it be used to collect websites I find, but also I can access the collections of other teachers who share their tracks. You can search for tracks by keyword to save time in finding good websites to use in class. I plan to create tracks for life science, earth and space science, chemistry, and physics to help my students study for the GED science test.

Related to the Trackstar assignment was the web evaluation assignment. Any responsible teacher should thoroughly evaluate and preview each website used in class. I do so using an informal holistic evaluation. However, I do see how districts may need to require a more formal evaluation tool. Even with all the good resources on the web, there is much garbage. Careless or incompetent teachers have the potential to expose students to websites that are worthless at best and harmful at worst. The web evaluation assignment reminded me of what to look for in educationally constructive websites.

I have used the Google website creation tool in the past. Google makes it easy for anyone to create a website with basic functionality. With some further exploration, I think I could exploit the Google features more fully to expand the functionality. I think every teacher should survey the students to determine what proportion of the class has internet access at home. A class website should be established if enough students have access to make the effort fruitful. In this assignment I learned many ways that a class website could improve communication and cooperation among teacher, students, and parents.

So many people today – both parents and students – have devices on which they can receive emails and messages. It seems as if today everyone is digitally connected to everyone else. It only makes sense that teachers should take advantage of this technology for improved communication. A listserv provides a quick and easy way to disseminate information to parents and students, and it is a snap to set up. Again, I would definitely consider using this technology in my classroom if enough students and parents have the capability.

With so many uses of technology both in the classroom and accessible by parents, it might be a good idea to offer a seminar on educational technology to parents so they can be informed about the digital classrooms of today. Parents should know that the classrooms of their children may be very different from their own school days.

I think an electronic portfolio is a valid way to assess learning for some classes - specifically, classes that lend themselves to project activities such as art, literature, and social studies. Perhaps it is my mathematics background or my rational nature, but I prefer more objective assessments for most subjects. I do think a portfolio is a valuable tool for displaying many talents and skills to prospective employers.

In this class I was able to display both my strengths and some of my weaknesses. To perform well in any online class, it is necessary to have good organizational and time management skills. These are my strengths. At the beginning of the semester, I fill in a blank calendar with each assignment for every class I take. I decide which days I will work on which assignments and highlight due dates of each. Then, as each task is completed, I mark it off the calendar. I check the calendar before each study period to make sure I stay on track. My weakness is spending too much time on projects, and trying to be too much of a perfectionist. Unfortunately, my final products sometimes still don’t reflect the amount of time I put into them. For example, I spent far too much time on the flyer, but I did learn how to do some interesting things with drawing tools in the process. Also, I can be somewhat longwinded when writing – as you can see from my blog entries as well as this final reflection.

In the future, I hope to secure a faculty position at a community college teaching business office technology or computer technology. I believe what I learned in this course will help me achieve this goal. I hope the electronic portfolios I have produced for my classes will show my skills and my professional pride in all that I do.