Looking back at the journey through this program, I am excited to see a lot of growth in my skills, mindset and pedagogy. The areas where I saw growth were surprising. I thought I would leave this program with a few new tools, but I felt that I already had a good grasp on using technology in the classroom and thought that I would only have minimal growth. It had been a very long time since I had been in any type of college level class. I was challenged to think more academically and discuss with the cohort how my students were learning and what motivated them. I was also challenged to use different tools than I was used to. I was comfortable with building a google site but I had never used Weebly. Now I can see its strengths and feel much more comfortable using it for the future. I also had never used tools like adobe spark which has become one of my new absolute favorite tools. I also found out that Adobe Spark has an app where you can make images on the go and access them online through the computer. I think the idea of transliteracy really stuck with me as well. Our students are truly exposed to so much visual, audio and video media. We need to make our classrooms as visually engaging as the games and media that they devour in their free time. Why not turn your classroom into a game or create infographics and visually stimulating materials for your students. I also gained a lot more confidence in making videos. I had done tons of basic screencasts before this program but now I know how to weave that into an even more visually appealing video.
I have also especially loved getting to know my cohort. I think we were slow to bond but as we got to the last semester I really enjoyed the feedback and collaboration I had from my fellow cohort members. I wish there was time devoted to our workday for reflection like these blogs and to read what other teachers on our staff are working on or challenged with at the moment. It was so nice to know that others valued my thoughts, validated what I was thinking and shared that they were struggling with something similar. I am grateful for this program!
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As the Innovative Learning Program comes to an end, I have been doing a lot of reflecting. I have truly enjoyed learning and collaborating with my classmates in this cohort. I can see keeping in touch with many of them after this program ends. The biggest takeaway from the program is really focusing on my ultimate user of my work: my students. I really enjoyed doing some research into what motivated my students. I was surprised that the results did not match what I had previously thought motivated my students. I realized that in addition to learning new tools in the classroom, I am constantly redesigning and rethinking lessons to make them better for my students. I have a passion for using technology in the classroom and there is always more to learn about technology because it is always changing!
I plan to share my research with my principal as part of my professional evaluation this year. I have already shared the hyperdoc that I created with some of my colleagues. Through the work that I did this year I also encouraged my teaching partner to explore some new tools with me such as flipgrid and quizizz. We also explored the new features of padlet. This again is part of my commitment to lifelong learning and collaborating with other teachers. I hope that this program continues to bring some new ideas and inspiration into my classroom for years to come. I also plan to continue sharing about the positive effects of technology in my classroom both virtually with other teachers and in person with other staff members at my site. Our school site had previously done some professional development regarding technology standards. Prior to my journey at TU in the Innovative Learning Program, I thought I had been using plenty of technology and digital tools in my classroom. As I learned more about 21st century learning and TPACK, I realized that I needed to focus more on overlapping skills in my lessons. As teachers, we are designers of our students learning experiences. After learning more about TPACK this year, I have been more careful to try to design learning experiences where there is overlap between my technical, pedagogical and content knowledge. I am also trying to create learning experiences for my students where they can practice technical skills and also demonstrate content knowledge.
In addition to learning more about TPACK, I have also constantly trying to analyze the learning and use of technology in my classroom to the SAMR model. As a teacher using technology, I want to make sure that my students are using technology to enhance their learning, not just simply substituting using technology for something that would be the same or better on paper. I feel that as the novelty of using technology in the classroom wears off for our own students, we need to be mindful of when and how we are using technology to make sure we are enhancing learning, creating transliterate lessons and pushing our students to do things they never could have done without the use of technology. After viewing the capstones assigned this week in class, I can confidently say that my audience will be middle school teachers. I am still in the process of deciding if I am going to focus on my work with digital literacy or digital tools for motivation, or a marriage of the two. Either way, I can see my work benefitting other teachers who are using technology in the classroom or are at the beginning of their journey of integrating technology into the classroom. On my learn more pages I want to provide sample lessons on the lesson tabs and somehow show some of my student work if I can find a way to blur out their names. I also think that links to sites like common sense media and other websites where I gathered resources to build my digital literacy hyperdoc could go on the learn more page. I most definitely want to showcase the hyperdoc that I made and maybe even the digital badge that I created in 702 (even though my students had finished the unit before I created the badge). I think I also want to show all of the different rounds of research both on digital tools and also on the digital literacy skills of my students. I know I need to spend some time gathering the links I want to provide to my users and also some videos and infographics that can add more visual to the page and break up the text. I want my capstone to be "minimalist" but full of amazing resources. Less is more in my mind. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the building of the pages. Taking the time with some specific questions to answer as homework this week helped me to not just navigate through the pages, but to navigate with a specific focus and mindset. My passion for technology in the classroom began 6 years ago when I jumped into an Ipad pilot program with both feet. I had always considered myself a "techie" but this first year of using technology with 36 students proved to be a turning point in my teaching career. I loved the way that technology excited my students and enhanced their learning and motivation. I developed curriculum for my science classroom that involved a variety of technology tools. My passion and excitement for technology in the classroom led me to be the Technology Liaison for the staff at my middle school. In this position I led numerous staff trainings on technology tools and blended learning. I earned my Google Certified Educator level 1 and 2 and also became a Google Certified Trainer.
I entered the Innovative Learning program with a strong background of using technology in the classroom. This program led me to reflect on tools that I have used and focus on the true purpose of using technology in the classroom which was motivating my middle school students. I am grateful of the mentors and fellow innovative teachers I have met during this program and look forward to continuing my journey to creating a 21st century classroom. My goals for this program would be to create a capstone project that encompases all of the work I have done in my classroom, not just in this program but throughout my experience of teaching in a blended classroom. I am worried that this is not an "innovative" project because I have not necessarily created anything new. I have created lessons for the last 6 years using technology but I am not honing my skills and creating a specific toolkit of what has worked with my students with the data to back it up and sample lessons that a teacher could utilize in their classroom.
I hope that my fellow cohort members can help me with ideas of what would be most useful to them as a teacher user of my capstone product. I think I can support cohort members by listening to their struggles and trying to offer ideas or solutions to their problems. I also feel pretty comfortable navigating websites and building content so I think I could be an asset to other teachers in that respect. I think we are already a great cohesive cohort but sometimes I do tend to feel a little out of the loop being the only person in the cohort from my district. I have met face to face with 2 of the members of our cohort but I would like to work outside of class with more cohort members. I also sometimes feel like the odd ball because so many teachers are focused on the elementary grade level and/or already teach at the same school and can bounce ideas off of each other much easier. I am hoping that this class bring clarity to the final project. I also hope that the project idea that is currently in my head will fit the requirements with some revisions and changes. I am looking forward to seeing everyones finished projects! My driving question has changed dramatically since the beginning of this journey. My original research was related to increasing middle school students digital literacy skills through a digital literacy unit. Research was conducted on students abilities to evaluate digital media for credibility. I developed a week long unit involving a pre and post test for my middle school students to use. In this unit I incorporated many digital tools such as padlet, flipgrid, edpuzzle, google forms and quizizz.
As a science teacher who had a large amount of content to still cover in the year, I found myself continuing to test out various digital tools in all of my lessons as well as weaving them into the hyperdocs that I was creating for my classes. I began to whittle down my list of tools to the ones that worked the best in my class for motivating students. I collected data through surveys to my students about which tools motivated them to try their hardest and which tools they simply enjoyed using. As I collected this data, I realized that many of the digital tools that worked well in my class involved students posting their work to a peer audience or tools that involved competition. My new driving question: How do digital tools and methods increase student motivation? My audience is both the students in my classroom who will benefit from tailored lessons next year as well as other middle school teachers who can access the data collected from my current students and also the lesson plans I have compiled. |