EDLD+5364+Responses

1. What outcomes had you envisioned for this course? Did you achieve those outcomes? Did the actual course outcomes align with those that you envisioned? I really envisioned gaining a greater understanding of how to use a google document. I had no previous experience using a google document and was not very confident in the beginning of the couse. The course has required much collaboration with our group members in the past five weeks. I have learned to use google documents for collaborating and organizing with group members for the development of the class project. My group members and I had the ability to create a website by collaborating through our google documents. This was all accomplished, dispite us being spread apart hundreds of miles from one another. We were able to share our ideas in a timely fashion to complete our assignments each week. Yes, I feel that I am more capable in accomplishing any given collaboration task with what I have learned from the course.

2. To the extent that you achived the outcomes, are they still relevant to the work that you do in your school? Why or why not? Just about all the outcomes that were achieved are relevant to the work I do every day at my school. The creation of solutions to specific classroom situations, the integration of technology into lesson planning, and accommodating diverse students with universal design lessons. The help received from group members was invaluable refering resources to help complete group assignments. I will definatley be using the google document to get my students to share their ideas with each other and with teachers to collaborate for upcoming events. Events are very hard to finalize in a busy atmosphere like a large middle school where I work. From the experience I had in this course I really believe that future collaboration through google documents will be a very time efficient and flexible tool to use for everyone involved. The lesson and book builder will be greatly utilized in my classroom. As a special education teacher, my students need several different media’s to receive instruction. The universal design for learning is a must when it comes to the different learning styles of my regular and special education inclusion students.

3. What outcomes did you not achieve? What prevented you from achieving them? The only thing I do not believe I achieved in this course was the ability to set up the web cam conference. I know we had a couple of opportunities at the very beginning of the course, yet I was not able to attend these invitaitions due to a tutorials I held for work. I would definatley like to try it out next in my next course, however the google document in real time still worked out just great. There was no dely or inconvienance with the non-video collaboration and that was a plus because I think a lot of the students or my group members did not feel prepared to use the web cam. We might need to have little bit more training over web conferencing to get everyone on the same page. I also believe that being able to see and talk to your follow members conference members gives you a clear atvantage over a google group conference document. Another advantage is you can have a more impersonal feeling or environment when communicating and you can better familiarize yourself with one another.

4. Were you successful in completing the course assignments? If not, what prevented or discouraged you? No, I was a little late with a couple of assignments due to the Thanksgiving break. It very difficult that week for myself since the entire family came to town. I was able to finish my assignments and tried to turn them in the following Monday, but was not allowed to submit. I believe that it ultimately falls on me in the end. I take full responsibility for the two missing assignments and will improve on my time management in the future. Graduate school has really been a very challenging experience and I have been discouraged by the amount of work envolved on top of my daily job duty’s. Somehow I am able to get it done week in and week out. This may be possible by the fact that I enjoy learning about new ways of integrating technology into the classroom so much. The more I learn the more I can teach my students and co-teachers.

5. What did you learn from this course: about yourself, your technology and leadership skills, and your attitudes? I have learned how serious I am about this technology leadership program. Right now I feel I have a elevated sense of respect and admiration for the field of technology education and what this could mean for my future in the field. I realiae now that I have specific intensions of what I want to do with in technology education. I want to make a difference in our learning institutions and students by preparing them for the future they will face. I am more motivated to keep learning as much as I can from this course and overall degree program. My technology and leadership skills will get better and have grown as a result of the 5364 couse. I will need to improve my leadership skills as I find more responsibility with technology in my school. The attitude I have had about this couse can be described as thirsty because I keep wanting and needing to replenish my thirst for this knowledge. It is a fresh start and much of these teaching tools are new to me. I work with about six teachers every week co-teaching regular and special education students. The majority of these teachers have very limited technology integrated lesson plans. This is where I have steped up by introducing learning applications and increasing on-line research activities in my classrooms. I have had the opportunity to integrate a large variety of technology education and have enjoyed every second of it. It is a new kind of fulfilling reward to do the things im being tought to do in this course at my job the next day. 