I have learned a lot through this course, and am continually doing so. One thing I have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology is that there are numerous ways to teach in regard to the different learning styles. There’s an abundance of Web 2.0 Tools on the Internet that can help us cater to those students who need a different instructional method to help better learn material. I’ve witnessed this through example. There were many tools we used throughout this course and through our assignments. It gave me the opportunity to realize which programs/tools worked well for my learning style and which did not meet my preference. Similarly, our students face the same challenges within their own learning styles. Moreover, I believe this course has helped me become reflective of what technology I’m integrating in my lessons and what my objective for the students will be. I’m assessing what features are offered, what works best for different learning styles, which programs fit well with the curriculum, etc. By constantly evaluating technology, your own teaching methods and students’ learning, we can use these great technologies more effectively for the sake of our students’ learning.
The assignments that we did that demonstrated good teaching with technology were the assignments that involved collaboration and teamwork. Using our course site alone was definitely one of them. In addition, there were our blogs, social networking, and RSS feeds; which all including communicating with our personal networks. This also entails our SIG group work, which in my case involved the study of StoryBird. Besides collaborating on StoryBird, to do this project, we also used Google Docs to share our thoughts and make one collaborative piece that represented our group. Ultimately, I believe communicating and collaborating are very important and useful skills to obtain. Furthermore, we want our students to collaborate with their peers and learn about good teamwork. Using programs like these directly shows us first hand what some of the ups and downs of these programs may be. Therefore, we can take that into account when we teach it (for example, being fair with group members, digital citizenship, program quirks, etc.). We can prepare students for what they’ll come across so that they will know how to handle it when they’re in the middle of a project. Most importantly, they will take back with them how to effectively work with others.
Some of the goals in my Personal Growth Plan dealt with using Web 2.0 Presentation tools to allow students the ability to innovatively create with digital tools, which hopefully, in turn will help make meaningful learning experiences. I have been able to do this in the latter part of my school year. Instead of having students make posters of non-fiction units, I had them create a Glogster. Also, I assessed their knowledge through drawings and narration using PhotoStory to express what they’ve learned. It seemed to be well-rounded lessons with meaningful learning experiences that reached multiple learning styles in the process. However, because of the reflective process that we went through in this course, I am constantly coming up with new goals. What I would like to begin implementing this next school year, will be to focus on using technology to promote communication; in addition to creating projects and feeling that sense of ownership that I set out to do this year. I want students to be able to evaluate their peers, be respectful of digital citizenship, and be able to positively receive their peers’ feedback. At times, students are more concerned with their peer’s thoughts and views than their teachers. So I would like to get them used to accepting and giving positive feedback of how they can improve the projects we do in my class, as well as, adapting to the reflective process. The reflections have proved to be very helpful to my learning process and students can benefit from that habit as well.
