Reflection+on+EDLD+5306+Assignments

Concepts of Educational Technology
 When I started the assignment for the first week of this class I was already overwhelmed with the amount of reading that was required. I found myself reading and rereading the articles for a third or fourth time before the information would stay in my head. I learned that I had to read at a much slower pace than I was used to, this was not like reading fiction. When I started reading the Long Range Plan for Technology, which I had skimmed when it arrived at our school district, I started comparing what we were doing in our school with what the document stated we should be doing. We were good on some things but others we were not. It always seemed to come down to money, or rather the lack of money. When analyzing one area of the LRPT, I chose the first key area which is Teaching and Learning. One emphasis of Teaching and Learning is how curriculum will be delivered in the future, one of which is distance learning. Distance learning is a powerful tool, providing students across the state with equitable access to quality education and instruction (//LRPT//, 2006, p.17). I personally feel that online courses should be made available for students, but the method of delivery is an issue. I know it is possible to create online courses but I have not attempted to create one even though it is one of the areas included on the STAR chart, which brings me to the assignment on the Texas STAR chart. I have been the person responsible for completing campus level charts, district level charts and making sure all of the teachers in the district fill out their responses. I am very familiar with the level of technology use in our school district so the results of the analysis of the STAR chart were no surprise to me. Part of the STAR chart assignment was to create a PowerPoint presentation on the results of the analysis. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski (2009) maintain that the advancement of presentation technology is one of the most powerful innovations in educational technology (p.105). Creating the PowerPoint was easy but I had never posted one online. I would not have thought it would be difficult to put a presentation online, the process though was not so easy. I tried several of the websites included in the assignment finally finding one that worked for me and posted the Texas STAR chart presentation. When summarizing the Technology Applications TEKS I chose the 3rd – 5th grade level since I was not familiar with what was required for those grades. The four strands, Foundations, Information Acquisition, Problem Solving, and Communication are the same for all grade levels, but each division of grade levels builds on the TEKS from previous grade levels. From this summarization I determined that our students are not mastering these TEKS at the correct grade level. Creating the wiki was something I enjoyed. It reminded me of the types of assignments assigned to the students in some of the Tech Apps classes. I already knew what a wiki was but had not created one. I enjoyed the creation and updating of the wiki. Solomon and Schrum (2007) write, it’s ease of use makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring (p. 58). I invited some of the teachers on the high school campus to join the wiki and participate. Two of the teachers posted regularly for a while. I could certainly see where a wiki would be a great way to share ideas. Posting to the discussion board was one of the hardest parts of each week, not because I had to write, but had to write in a way that others would understand what I was saying and want to post a comment. Reading the other discussion posts was very helpful to me. Sometimes the posts help me to understand the assignments better and sometimes they helped me make a connection with one of the articles we had read and commented on.

 Pitler H., Hubbell E., Kuhn M., & Malenoski K. (2007). //Using technology with classroom instruction that works.// Alexandria VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Solomon G., & Schrum L. (2007). //web 2.0 new tools, new schools.// Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education. Texas Education Agency. (2006). //Long Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020.// Austin, TX: Author.