Through my 811 Technology class I learned how important it is to make sure that technology is adding something to the lesson and not just there to be there. It is important to make sure that the lesson with technology solves an actual problem or need that is applicable to the real world.
I also learned that I can’t take a single aspect of technology but I need to combine many to ensure that I am making my lesson accessible to all of my students. Using the UDL checklist I was able to see where my lessons have holes that my students might slip through. This aspect really opened my eyes to how narrow my lessons are at times and that I need to focus on expanding the different avenues to get to my content.
With the WebQuest Evaluation and the UDL principles I really looked hard at evaluating the uses of technology and making sure that it was worth the time to do it with the students and that it had a clear purpose that solved a problem or a need. I can now more closely analyze my technology and see if it’s a good resource to integrate or not.
I have met my personal goals for learning about technology integration which was simply to absorb as much information as I possibly could so that this summer I could go through it all. During the first technology class my goal was to actually try what I had learned in the classroom, but I quickly discovered I didn’t have the time to do that and modified my goal for this class. Any and all useful information I added to my Diigo account so that I have it whenever I need it and I will have access to it when the class is done.
My new goals, as I’ve already briefly touched on, are to take what I’ve learned and run with it. This summer I’m going to sit down and figure out how exactly I want to incorporate the wiki and the website into my classroom. These will be utilized in different ways based on each of the age groups as I teach K-8 Spanish. I want to make the website more for the parents of the elementary to use to know where the students are at and to give them resources to practice with their children. The wiki I want to use for class collaboration and displaying some of the students work. I’d also like them to make a Spanish dictionary on the Wiki as a class, adding to it as we learn new words.
I would like to make several more stair projects on different cultural aspects so that I can use them as sub plans if I am absent. That way the students aren’t actually losing a day of Spanish when I am absent and it will be engaging to them. I’d also like to make stair designs for some of the stories that we read as a class so that there can be an independent work with the story with questions to gage understanding.
For my timeline I am taking the summer to concentrate on taking all of the information that I’ve gathered thus far from my classes and actually integrate it into my current lessons. Right now I simply don’t have the time to do that and I greatly look forward to the summer to dive into this. I will jump into the master’s program next summer when I’ve had a full year to practice and test out everything I have learned from the certificate. I think these are attainable goals and reasonably spread out to allow me to focus all of my energies on each one.
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