EDLD 5352- Assignment Week 5- 12/18/09

As I look back on this course and think about the expectations that I had in the beginning, I can now smile. I was not really comfortable with technology, and didn’t realize quite how much “common” knowledge I didn’t have. When I was in undergraduate school at The University of Michigan it was the 80’s, and we learned how to program in “Fortran” and key punch cards….yes, I can hear the “youngsters” from this class wondering if we had inkwells back then too! So to say I was leery about even passing this class is to put it mildly. I felt way out of my comfort zone. I can remember the night I had to post my assignment to my blog, that took me a lot of extra hours to even figure out ”how to make “ first, I can remember hitting “CTRL, C”; “CTRL, v” over and over trying to get the darn thing to go on the blog. Then I noticed that I missed the section about the programs we had to upload to in order to convert our power point, and then upload it to our blog…..wow, what a night….but I kept “toughing “it out throughout the course, and refused to let it intimidate me- I just had to spend a whole lot of extra hours mastering the technology part first. I am so happy that I stuck with it, because I feel that I have learned so much in this course.




One of the main things that I learned was about the technologies that are actually considered to be educational that we don’t use at all in my school- some of which I had never heard about, and others that I was made to think weren’t acceptable educational tools. It was really refreshing to see how these different technologies could be used in the classrooms, and that I could now work towards helping my district get over their “fear” of them, and hopefully help others use them.



One of the main goals I had was just to survive this course…..but to my great surprise I did more than that, I feel that I can really put a lot of the new technologies I learned to work at my campus, if I can get them to approve them. I really enjoyed the videos, the readings, and the way that the discussion posts were done. There seemed to be a lot more interaction and collaboration with my classmates in the way this class was designed. It was reassuring to see that I wasn’t alone in not having a lot of the technology resources we learned about. More importantly, was getting the insight into some of the districts where my classmates work, that did use the technology to the benefit of their students. It is data like this that I feel that I can use as an administrator to open the discussion into getting the use of the technology approved in my district. I feel that blogging, podcasts, teacher-created websites, and video uploads should be allowed to be used as tools to teach. I also checked the different districts around mine, and I found that some are using these different technologies to their advantage, even though they aren’t allowed yet in mine. I will continue to work to achieve at least the use of some of them during the rest of the school year, and will continue to push the idea forward as an administrator.



I feel that I was very successful in carrying out the assignments for this class. Although, I am sure it probably took me twice as long as a lot of the other students to do them, I know that they were very much worthwhile to me. I feel that the topics and ideas that we looked at and studied were very relevant to my daily life as a teacher and as an administrator. Even though I am not totally comfortable with all of the new technologies I have learned about in this course, I have definitely mastered an understanding of the majority of them. What I learned about myself in the course is that I can learn how to use the technology that my students and children have grown up with and take for granted. I know now that even though I am a “digital immigrant” vs a “digital native “ I am still able to master it. I really enjoyed talking with my students about a lot of the technologies that were new to me, only to find out that they know all about it already!



I feel that the educational value of blogs and blogging to the 21st century learner can be of extreme value. I really feel that it would be of great use in the classroom for students to give closure to what they learned that day in class. It is useful for teachers to use as a way to keep parents abreast of what their students are learning, doing, and should be studying daily in your class. Teachers could also use it within their areas of expertise to share and collaborate with staff members within their school, or even with a further reach out….district, or statewide even. AP’s and/or the Principal could use it as a very important way of keeping the stakeholders in the community, both parents and business owners, or partner colleges abreast of important events and information related to the schools business. Our goal has always been to increase parent and community involvement in my district and this could really strengthen the ties, and open up the communication between us. I don’t feel that blogging should be a great concern in education; I feel that there are worse areas of the internet that need to be monitored than it. Of course there would have to be someone monitoring for inappropriate posts, etc.



All in all, I really enjoyed this class and even though at each new technology try my level of frustration would rise, I feel that I have come a long way in my understanding of technology within the schools, and how my students can benefit from my continued learning in this area. I will continue to expand my knowledge in the area of blogs, and teacher websites especially and work to get my district to approve their use.