Final Reflection - CEP 812

Effective Strategies


Throughout this course, I have been reminded that just with teaching without technology, teaching with technology requires careful consideration of the teaching strategies that will maximize student learning.  Perhaps for some concepts, technology does not help enhance learning.  Sometimes tutorials will be more appropriate than drill and practice and sometimes simulations will be better than drill and practice.  It's necessary to evaluate what you want the students to gain from the lessons and then look at what strategies using technology may be most effective.

Evaluating Uses of Technology

I try to find web-based technologies that can work in my setting.  This is often challenging considering the little access we have to computers and the Internet.  Therefore, it's important to consider how things may be modified to be able to use with what we are given as well as how I can directly incorporate it into something we are already doing.  I find that when I am able to do this, I am not modifying our learning, but modifying how we reach the end result given what resources we have. 

Personal Goals

I am continually learning how to incorporate technology with limited resources.  It may often seem like I sound like a broken record.  I am finding that it is becoming easier to incorporate technology in ways that work with my classroom.  I may not be able to include all students all the time, but the nature of how my classroom is structured allows for me to provide students opportunities that best meet what they are doing at the time.  This may mean that I work with one student on a particular project and teach them something new, while another students learns a different technology.  We are learning together how we can best use the resources we have. 

Beginning in January, I will be serving on a committee that will look at how we can best improve the technology situation at our school.  I'm looking forward to taking back what I have learned in these three courses and helping to educate others. 

New Goals

For now, I think it is best to continue developing goals that I have already begun to meet.  This will mean perhaps taking them a step further.  It is a continual process, but I am pleased with how things are progressing.  As stated earlier, I will continue to help my school gain resources and skills that will help teachers feel empowered to use technology in their classrooms.  Long-term, I hope to complete the Masters program associated with these three certificate courses.

TechQuest Project Evaluation

My experience with this TechQuest project has given me the opportunity to think through how to use technology to solve a particular problem or need.  In doing so, I have been able to understand the importance of the planning step in order to be sure that technology is being used effectively so as to help solve the problem or need being addressed.  Without this step, I do not think that similar projects will be as successful. 

It would be interesting to see whether a project like this could be completed for a whole school.  Perhaps a committee would be given a problem of practice within their setting; it would then become the committee's job to see how technology could be effectively used to solve the problem.  This could be difficult in large schools, but could work in a setting such as mine. 

One thing I may do differently is create a project that will not take quite so long.  I am still excited about my project and seeing how students grow throughout the process, but I worry that my time frame will be too long.  It may be hard to keep excitement going for several months.

In regards to this specific project, one lesson I learned is not to be afraid to include additional technology that may make things run more smoothly.  For instance, writing survey questions should have been done using technology.  Despite having few resources, I think this could have made this process go more quickly had we chosen to use shared documents or wikis to compile our questions. 

Due to the nature of my classroom (multi-age, grades 6-8), I will not be able to repeat this particular project each year.  However, I could put this project in a three-year rotation so that it comes up once for each middle school student.  Similar projects could be completed during the remaining two years.  I do feel that it has been successful thus far and will, therefore, try to repeat it again in a few years.  Depending on how the remainder of the project unfolds, I may choose a different time frame try to shorten the length of time of the entire project.  Careful evaluation of this entire process will be necessary to determine how to do so, as it may be difficult to know what to cut.  All in all, I think the project is valuable for students and uses technology effectively.    

TechQuest Project Implementation

The implementation of my TechQuest project has begun.  Please click here to listen to the podcast and hear how it is going so far.