Week 7 Reflection

• In what ways has this course helped you to develop your own technology skills as a professional teacher?

This course has helped me to develop my own technology skills as a professional teacher in a number of ways.  First of all, before this course the only technology of the major three with which we have worked (blogs, wikis, and podcasts) that I was accustomed to using was blogging.  This course has helped me to better use that tool in my classroom.  Second, this course has exposed me to the use of wikis.  While I have not yet integrated the use of wikis into my classroom, I now know how to use a wiki and am looking for an opportunity to use it in my teaching.   Third, this class has made me more proficient in the use of podcasts.  Prior to the class, I had dabbled with podcasts, but I now feel very comfortable in making, editing, and publishing them.  In fact, I have begun to have my students do podcasts in class.  Finally, this class has given me numerous technology resources that will help me to keep up to date with technology in the classroom. 

• In what ways have you deepened your knowledge of the teaching and learning process?

My knowledge of the teaching and learning process has deepened in a couple ways.  First, I have gained a better understanding of how to make my classroom learner-centered.  This is always something that I have tried to do, but this class has provided me with tools and strategies that allow me to do so with more efficiency.

The second way that I have deepened my knowledge of the teaching and learning process is by better understanding the needs of today’s students.  The technology survey that we did during the course really helped me to narrow in on what the students’ expectations are when coming into the classroom.  I believe that these things I have learned will help me going forward.

• In what ways have you changed your perspective from being teacher-centered to learner-centered?

I do not believe that I have really changed my perspective in this area.  I have always been a teacher that has taken a learner-centered perspective.  I do believe that I have learned how to be more effective in this area by integrating technology into my lesson plans.  But, my philosophy has not changed as a result of this course.

• In what ways can you continue to expand your knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement?

There are a couple ways that I plan to continue to expand my knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology.  First, I will use the resources that I have found in this class.  There are a number of great websites that I have been introduced to throughout this course.  I will continue to visit them regularly to see what innovative things can be used in my classroom

Second, I will begin to look with more precision at what my students need to succeed.  Implementing new things into the classroom is not enough.  I really need to analyze their effectiveness through reflection.  In a sense, I need to make my classroom into an experiment and investigate what helps the students to increase achievement.  While I have certainly done this in the past, it has been an informal process.  I want to become more effective at analyzing and using student results to design my teaching process.

Set two long-term goals (within two years) for transforming your classroom environment by which you may have to overcome institutional or systemic obstacles in order to achieve them. How do you plan to accomplish these goals?

My first goal is to transition my classroom to a textbook-free classroom.  Throughout this course I have seen the potential that is available with the digital revolution.  I would like to see my students not rely on textbooks and have the opportunity to use online textbooks in conjunction with all of the additional information available online.  In order to do this I will definitely need to be proactive.  Right now I only have one computer in my classroom.  Next year will be an improvement as we move into a new building.  We will have 20 laptops to share among the four language classrooms.  I am already in the process of looking for technology grants to get my classroom to have a one-to-one student-to-computer ratio.  I will continue to do this until this goal is accomplished.
My second goal is encourage the development of 21^st century skills throughout my high school.   These skills have not been emphasized, or really even mentioned, in my district.  I want to become active in encouraging these new skills and how tailor instruction to meet the needs of the 21^st century learner.  This could start by simple things like engaging colleagues in discussion about the new skill set and making these ideas known.  Beyond that, however, I believe that it is going to take a core group of teachers to make this a priority in our building.  I envision putting together a small group of teachers that have bought into the 21^st century concept to present the idea to the rest of the staff as well as the administration.  I think that the administration will be open to the ideas, but we are going to have to own it if we want to see change come quickly.

Refer to your checklist from Week 1. Have any of your answers changed after completing this course?

Looking over the checklist, not much has changed for me since beginning the course.  One thing that I do notice a difference in is enabling students to take responsibility for their own learning.  I think that this course has helped me to better understand how to implement lessons and strategies that allow the students to engage in the learning process.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

My initial reaction to the 21st century website was actually one of intrigue.  Before this week's assingments, I had never even heard of the 21st century skills concept.  Even more to my surprise was the fact that Ohio, the state in which I live, is listed on the site as being one of the 21st century states.  I certainly make an effort to keep up with current trends in education, but all of this was new to me.

I must say that there is really nothing on the website that caught me by tremendous surprise.   The skills and framework laid out on the site are things that I already strive to put into my classroom.  However, having a resource like this really helps to clarify things in my mind.  It also reenforces why I do what I do in my classroom.  The site provides me a checklist of sorts of the skills that I need to be developing in my students.  Because I teach Spanish, it is also refreshing to see that world languages are now being included into the list of core subjects. 

I searched long and hard to find something on the site with which I disagree.  However, I could not do so.  As I said earlier, the skills developed in 21st century education are things in which I wholeheartedly believe.  As the Skills White Paper describes, we live in a new type of society - one in which educational styles and outcomes must change and adapt to meet the new type of students that are part of that society.

The implications for me as a teacher are that I must continue to evolve as an educator.  Teaching 21st century skills is not something one can locate in a textbook.  It requires time, effort, and probably a lot of mistakes and learning on my part in the process.  It also requires that I teach my students a new way to learn.  I would consider myself to be one of the more progressive educators in my high school.  I am sure that a lot of teachers will not buy into the 21st century skills idea.  That means that more of the burden falls on those of us that do to expedite the process so that students are as prepared as possible.  In terms of the students, they are also facing an adjustment.  Education and the way in which students are expected to learn and produce has changed tremendously from even five years ago.  In essence, just like I am learning to be a different educator, they are learning to be different learners.  And because the 21st century idea is not one that has inundated entire schools or educational systems, it might even be confusing students.  Should they memorize information or learn to process and deal with information?   Should they learn a formula to solve a story problem, or should they apply that to new and real life situations?  These are questions facing educators and students today and it is my responsibility as an educator to meet these questions head on an prepare my students to be effective 21st century learners.

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

I teach high school Spanish and I can see a number of benefits of using a blog in the classroom.  I think it can be used as a type of discussion forum, a platform to showcase student work, or simply a writing practice tool.  For me, perhaps the most intriguing part of using a blog is that students are interacting with the target language outside of the classroom.  Because I live in a part of the country with a very small Spanish-speaking population, the opportunities for my students to use language outside of the classroom are minimal.  By implementing a blog, however, students will interact with the target language much like they would their first language.  Students are constantly posting things on the internet in their personal lives, so why not harness that interest and use it in the classroom.  By doing so, they will be using the language in a more natural setting than in the 50 minutes of classroom time. 

My idea for using a blog is simply to post a prompt weekly to which the students must respond.  By doing this I can focus on certain skills or areas upon which the students need to improve.  It would function as an extension of the topics being covered in class.  For example, if we are studying a certain verb tense in class, I could post a prompt that would require students to respond using that structure.  Or if I see that students are lacking in vocabulary, I can post a prompt that will be aimed at developing vocabulary about a certain topic. 

As the year unfolded and students became more proficient at responding to my posts, I believe that I would also have them respond to their peers' prompts.   This may be the most powerful use of blogging in my opinion.  Students have a tremendous way of challenging one another's thinking and bringing out the best in their classmates.  I think that blogging among peers would assist in developing interactive communication skills that are difficult to fully develop in the foreign language classroom.