Personal Learning Reflection

As my first online course in Educational Technology at Michigan State University is coming to a close, I am amazed at just how much I have learned. I did not expect to come away with so much excitement and  so many skills, as well as  knowledge of and exposure to fabulous new technology. At the onset of this class, I wrote a personal growth plan in which I hoped to learn more about the Internet and how to learn from it and incorporate that learning into my teaching practices. I feel I have done that and so much more.

Having taught for 15 years now, I feel I have a good handle on the Pedagogical and Content areas of the TPACK philosophy. Through this course I am now able to bring the Technology portion of this TPACK method into my classroom and thus enrich the education of the young children that I teach. I know children, at 5 years of age, are concrete learners and attend and  respond well when creative and engaging teaching strategies are presented. I now know how to use the Internet to find new and exciting ways to teach and reach all my students. I have learned ways to involve my Kindergartners directly with technology in the classroom. I have a wealth of sites bookmarked in my Diigo online resource "cloud". From my assignments and through the SIG presentation, I have learned the steps and technology necessary to use a classroom blog that will also incorporate plug ins, such as slide shows, power point presentations, videos, and podcast. My students will be involved as much as possible, considering they are very young and most have very limited reading and writing skills. I will let them use a digital camera with supervision and allow them to be involved in the posts and decision making process. Having created and maintained this blog and the assignments in this course regarding this blog, I feel I am comfortable enough to put this into practice this coming Fall!

I will continue to use the rss reader page, as it is such an easy way to discover new ideas and communicate with other educators. This assignment allowed me to create a very useful tool and opened a whole new organized world for me. I am able to quickly find interesting articles and informative discussions and make comments when I feel my opinion is valuable and appropriate. I am excited to  learn tips and tricks on how to use the latest tools in technology. I can easily access the "Cloud" and write documents, create presentations and spreadsheets on google docs, and I know that I won't have to email these to open them on another computer. These tools have supported my growth immensely. Doing my Personal Technology Plan on google docs saved me literally! The day I needed to submit this for class, my laptop computer wend dead. I have a new battery on order as I believe it will no longer hold a charge. I was lucky that it was not a document or power point saved to my desktop. There were no tears shed as I simply logged on to the home desktop and submitted the assignment on time. Who would have thought that would happen?

Integrating the Internet has helped my attitude about using technology. I was surprised to find out about how many early childhood elementary educators are using it and to the degree that they use it. While lack of funding for technology upgrades and lack of funding for professional development may hold people back, the reality is that the world is changing and it will continue to evolve with or without me (or anyone else that chooses to to avoid it) on board. Teachers like myself may need to use their own money and resources to stay current. In a competitive and global society it only makes sense to "go the extra mile" and thus to instill this attitude and practice in our students. A quote by Harvard professor Derek Bok comes to mind, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." This popped into my head as a colleague responded to me that she can not afford to take classes. I told her that I could not afford not to. My point is that in order to remain an effective, current and exemplary educator, I feel I need to continue my professional development no matter what the cost. If I were to find myself without my current teaching job, I need to have the skills and knowledge necessary to be a desirable candidate in another setting, in education or otherwise.

Through the discussion posts, video tutorials, assignments in this course, and support of the professor of this class, I feel inspired to continue my journey at MSU. At the onset of this class, I admit, I was overwhelmed and scared and at times thought about retreating. But after reading the introductions from the other teachers and all their different and similar backgrounds to myself, I was encouraged. I felt that I could do this and I now I know I can. The unknown can cause anxiety and apprehension, my students also feel that and I need to equip them with the skills, attitude and confidence to fly on their own. Just as this class is doing for me!! My new goals and plans are to take the sequence of courses to complete the certificate and endorsement in hopefully two years time. I plan to be an advocate for technology use for my colleagues and an advocate for doing more with technology with my young students. I plan to remain dedicated to helping my students be the best that they can be, and in order to do that I need to prepare them for the future. They need to be prepared to be independent learners. This course has made me a more independent learner. I am more able to learn new things, organize them, present them and comprehend them because of this CEP 810 course. I am EMPOWERED! Somewhat of a simple concept in a very complex  and ever changing world.