Reflection

As this course comes to an end, I can´t help but feel a little sad. The time I spent in the whole program was wonderful and I learned so much from the teachers and my peers alike. I wish all of you lots of success as teacher leaders in the integration of technology in your school districts.


I am so excited to start using emerging technology in my classes as well as inspiring my administrators and colleagues to start using them as well. As was stressed by Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., Smythe, T. (2009) in the Horizon Report, there are new technologies which will be adopted within the year, others in the near future and others still, in four to five years time. All the tools I had opportunity to try out seemed so wonderful and will be able to be used in the classroom by me or by other teachers. I had the opportunity to see some tools that are fantastic for student motivation and commitment. I have seen other tools that would work so well in some of my colleague’s classrooms because of the specificity of the work they need to do with their students. After this course I realize that what I knew about technology was not really much compared to what I have come to learn, especially in this course. I also realize that I still have a long way to go and that I need to be prepared to adapt new technologies in my classroom and that I need to guide my fellow colleagues so that they too may do the same.

Our students are the twenty first century digital natives who use technologies on a daily basis and we as educators need to implement these technologies as educational tools to support, transform, expand, and deepen students learning. Brann, A., Gray, T., Piety, P. J., & Pacuilla H.S. (2010) believe that there are five key dimensions of science education for struggling students which are:

1. Physically doing science or “getting a mechanic grip” on the natural world

2. Visualization, representation, and modeling

3. Science literacy, vocabulary, and discourse

4. Questions, argumentation, and use of evidence

5. Student engagement and identity with science

Multi-user virtual environments for professional development and for student participation in learning networks such as teen second life, skoolaborate and flatclassrooms fulfil these dimensions. I have already started using some cloud based and collaborative tools such as voicethread, blogs, wikis, prezi, glogs, webquests, surveys, virtual field trips and simulations. I have already motiveted some of my colleagues to start using some of these tools as well.

www.flatclassroomproject.org

Flatclassrooms are ideal for activities that are performed on a worldwide scale where students are able to exchange ideas and experiences that will definitely be extremely beneficial for all involved. One of the flatclassrooms projects this year is “the way the World Wide Web changed the world” which is ideal for my “Science, Technology and Society” students which have a module on Technology. This is a wonderful opportunity for these students to learn more about technology and share their ideas and thoughts with students in the same program from schools anywhere in the world.

http://www.skoolaborate.com/

Skoolaborate is a Multi-user virtual environment prepared for educational purposes so it is the ideal setting for educators to use with their students. My “Quality, Environment and Security” and my “Science, Technology and Society” students have a learning module on sustainable development which gives me the ideal opportunity to have them do a project on sustainable constructions and have them construct a sustainable home in this virtual environment.

I enjoyed the videogames and know that there are many wonderful games out there. I just wish there were more good games for secondary school science. Hopefully they will start appearing soon. I saw good math games and good games for younger students.

I am going to commit to the purpose of changing my colleague's views on the integration of technology in the classroom and I am going to keep myself updated with the emerging and the disruptive technologies that may be of use in education. I have also joined the Kappa Delta Phi Honor Society, which is a good way to keep myself updated on what is new in education and educational technologies. I am also thinking of continuing my studies at Walden.

Maria

Brann, A., Gray, T., Piety, P. J., & Pacuilla H.S. (2010). Using Technology to Support Struggling Students in Science. Center for Implementation of Technology in Education.1-23.

Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., Smythe, T. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition, Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.