Course Reflections ED 5306

Outcomes I have envisioned for this course

When I signed up for this course in July of 2010, I had one goal in mind. That goal is to be improved in integrating technology into my classroom. I consider myself a technologically savvy individual. I thought I know all I need to know about teaching with technology. I did not know I will learn about other technology tools I have never heard off. After all the activities, assignments, readings, and discussions with my classmates, I believe I have achieved what I set out to achieve in this course.
This course, I believe, will make me become a better technology teacher or leader. My expectations were to learn more about many technological tools available to teach our students. This course has met those expectations. I learned many technology tools I can use to integrate technology into my classroom. I learned about my personality traits by using Keirsey Temperament Sorter. This was new to me as I had no idea that it exists. Other technology tools I learned are: blogging, using wikis, designing presentations, learning about technology planning, copyright, cyber bullying, and many more. For me, it was worth it to take this course.


The relevance of the outcomes to the work I do in my school

Everything I learned in this course is very much relevant to the work I do in my school. I am the technology leader, technology coordinator, technology teacher, and technology specialist for my school. I am the person to contact with any issue relating to technology on my campus. For this reason, it is very important that I know how to assist my colleagues integrating technology into their lessons. The course has taught me that.
Learning about Long Range Technology Plan is very much relevant to my job. As the technology coordinator, I must know how to develop technology plan for my school. After this course, I believe I am confident enough to take on the task of developing technology plan for my school. Learning about web 2.0 is essential and will help me to teach our students different ways they can collaborate and share ideas among their friends and teachers. Web 2.0 is a great tool that I believe will be beneficial for both students and teachers.


Outcomes not achieved

This course has turned out to be everything I had hoped it will be. It was very informative, exciting, fun, and useful. I have enjoyed every bit of it. I believe there are still more to be learned however. But as time goes on or with more courses to come, I believe I will learn more and more with this program.
I can honestly say that there is nothing I have set to achieve in this course that I have not achieved. The duration of this course was just five weeks. And I have learned more in those weeks than I could possible learn in whole year. As I am learning about technology tools, I am also learning about American Psychological Association (APA) writing format. This is my biggest challenge in this course. I have not learned about APA writing format until I started taking this course. But after five weeks of struggling with it, I believe I am starting to be proficient in using it in my writings.


Success in carrying out the course assignments

After starting to work on the assignments, I thought I will quit the course because of the amount of assignments I was to do in one week. Week one assignments was the largest one out of the five weeks. As I was doing the assignments, I kept saying to myself why we have to do so many assignments in one week. But while I was completing the assignments, I started enjoying the assignments because of the different activities included in the assignments.
Even though the amounts of assignments were huge, I was able to complete the assignments within the time frame allocated for them. The reason for my success in completing the assignments was because it was summer time and we have summer break. This gave me more time to devote in completing the assignments. When school returns this month, I don’t know if I will be able to complete the next assignments for the next course. But I believe I will find one way or the other to complete my assignments for the next course.


What I learned from this course about myself, my technology and leadership skills, and my attitudes

Concepts of Educational Technology course have taught me many technological tools I can use to be effective technology leader on my campus. I learned about my temperament using the self assessment tool developed by Dr. David Keirsey. This assessment placed me in the “Guardian” category. It reveals that I am a dependable, helpful, and hardworking person (http://www.keirsey.com).
This course has taught me to be sensitive to the way different students learn. I learned that one-size fits all approach does not work for many of our students. To be effective leader, I must try to accommodate students who learn in different ways other than the old traditional ways of teaching. This course has really changed my attitudes when it comes to teaching our students. I used to not liking students using or bringing their mobile phones to school. But after learning about many things students can do with cell phones that will benefit them, I am now going to be more acceptable to students using cell phones for technology education.
There is no doubt that this course has improved my leadership skills. During this course I learned the following: Long Range Technology Plan; State Technology Curriculum Standards; Texas Campus STaR Chart; and School District Technology Plan. I believe all of these concepts will help me to become a better technology leader.