Course Reflection

This course has proven to be the most useful for me so far as I progress towards finishing my master's.  The resources and ideas are not new, but having to go through it as a student gave me a different perspective than I normally have as a teacher.  This should prove helpful as I plan to incorporate these tools in my classroom, since I now have the experience actually doing some of the things I am going to ask my students to do.  I have gained new insights on the learning process as a student as well as some of the roadblocks or questions that may arise for my students.  I have seen how technology can be used as one part of 21st century skill integration, and allows for a different type of collaboration and problem solving.  It really comes full circle when you think about how all of these 21st century skills, including technology skills, interplay with each other, as well as how this all has changed the role of the teacher.  In order to make sure that I continue to expand my knowledge and keep up with ways to integrate technology in my practice, I will continue to follow the blogs that we reflected on in this course.

I have come up with two long-term goals for transforming my classroom environment.  The first is to go completely paperless in everything I do.  This should not be very difficult, but I do realize that there may be a few obstacles to overcome.   I anticipate having parents and maybe even administrators question this method, however I think that this can be addressed by making sure to communicate how helpful this will be in the long run.  We will not have to worry about losing papers, homework, or parent reports, because everything will be accessible through the student's Edmodo accounts, which parents have access to.  My second long-term goal is to turn my classroom into more of a lab learning environment.  I would like to have a lot more student-led learning, where students are able to come in and work on different things of their choice and at their own pace.  I would like this to be a complement to the core content areas and the topics that are being taught in those classes.  I think this goal will be more difficult to meet, because of some of the administrative requirements that come with our job.  Some things such as recording grades and writing lesson plans may be more difficult to do in an environment where students might all be working on something different and at different paces.

Because of the time in which this course took place, we were too far in the end of the school year for me to see any changes in my answers to my checklist that I filled out in week 1.  However I do see where my answers could change next year as I take what I have learned in this course and apply it to the fresh school year.  Specifically I can see how I can be a better teacher leader at school in developing technology skills and a vision for technology integration.  I am also most definitely more comfortable now to be able to model technology integration practices for colleagues to learn from.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

This week I explored The Partnership for 21st Century skills website.  This partnership is an organization advocating for the transformation of education into a 21st century learning environment.  I have seen some of the ideas from this framework in conferences that I have attended, however I had not had a chance to explore the website.  I find it interesting that there is a coalition out there which recognizes the disconnect that exists between student's education and the world they will graduate into, and especially that they are so interested in addressing this issue.  I did not know that there were so many states that have done something that the Partnership would consider "promising."  I like that the Partnership has recognized the difficulty in balancing instruction in the core subject areas, and meeting standards, with the need to also incorporate life and career skills, technological, and learning skills.  The implications of this on myself as an educator and my students as learners are hard to predict.  It almost feels like an uphill battle, one which can't be fought without many others joining in.  I don't know how much the Texas Education Agency recognizes that this disconnect exists and needs addressing.  As only one teacher, the only difference I can make is in my own classroom by doing as much as I can to help close this gap, and hope that the policymakers soon realize that they hold a lot of the power in their  own hands.