Reflection of Ed Technology

Since June 26th, I have been enrolled in a very important class that will start my transformation of my classroom into a 21st century classroom.  This class was just the start though.  The class is not the completion of my technology training but rather is a door.  I have had my eyes opened to the options that a 21st century classroom has.  I now am interested in podcasts, wikis, and blogs.  These all take the student first and centers the classroom around the student.  This class helped me realize that this new technology is really easy to obtain.  I easily did all the task required of me.  When I started the class I thought how could I ever make a podcast.  This class taught me that I can do it but I need more research and more reading.  

This class has deepened my understand of the learning process by understand the business world they will enter.  Students need to be able to think on their feet.  Students need to do research and synthesize information.  These student will use web meetings instead of face meetings.  This changes the need of school to produce thinkers.

This has reinforced my ideas that the classroom needs to be student centered.  Students must be first.  Its not about the teacher and what the teacher wants.  The teacher needs to establish objectives and assessment of those but allow the students to be able to take ownership of a project.  This will allow students to have the ability to think for themselves and trust themselves.  It is huge to get students to trust themselves.

How can I help my students better achieve and trust themselves?  I must continue to educate myself.  I need to keep reading professional blogs and continue to be a lifelong learner.  I need to keep taking chances for my students.  I understand that by taking these chances I will better my teaching.  Will some things fail yes but more will succeed if they are based in research based methods.  These method will improve my teaching and improve my students learning.  Now I have two goals for the next year.

Number 1 goal is to make a positive difference in ALL students lives.  There are so many things that get in the way of this.  Whether we can't do this because of a standardized test or their are too many students.  It is important that as teachers we need to make a difference.  To many students fall through the cracks.  I will hand write personal notes to all students with positive encouragement.  This will take time but the time will make the difference that all students need.

My number 2 goal would be to incorporate one of the methods I learned in class in my classroom.  Again it will be easy to not do anything.  That will not be the case though.  I will test out these methods in my civics class.  They will test it out before I use it in core class.  I can then show my principal the positive effects of these 21st century methods.  

This class has opened my eyes to the classroom of the future.  I am on my way to transforming my classroom to the 21st century.