EDTECH 541 Course & Blog Posts Reflection

PART ONE: COURSE REFLECTION

One of the remarkable thing about Edtech 541 is the amount of thinking, planning, and designing that has already taken place for the classes I will begin teaching tomorrow  (August 17).  Honestly, the requirement to choose one class and group of students to focus on while we created our products proved to be a blessing and curse throughout the semester.  For some assignments, solutions offered from technology integration seemed to fit nicely within the high school Geometry classroom.  However, in other cases, solutions came only after research and creative thinking.  While working on the latter products, I thought of some of the complaints my students have when I push them to stretch their thinking and work through uncomfortable feelings.  As a student, I felt frustrated; however, as an educator, I knew that frustration would eventually give way to a deeper learning.  As this course comes to an end and my next year as a high school educator begins, I am excited to see how my lesson plans and activities support students in their learning.  Furthermore, as I plan lessons and choose technology for my other courses this school year, I know I am better equipped to assess the needs of my students, evaluate the relative advantages of particular strategies and tools, and make the best decisions for my classroom.

The AECT Initial Program Rubric and the learning goals of this course appear to be highly aligned.  Tasks from each week’s assignments quickly come to mind while reading the descriptions of each domain under the target column.  Whether it is design, development, utilization, management, or evaluation, mastery of each of these domains was required to complete each competent of each week’s product.  For example, in week 7, educators (students of the course) were required to choose assistive technologies for their classroom (PLAN).  This required an understanding of instructional strategies (DESIGN) and how to integrate technology into a particular content area to create a learning environment for students with special needs  (DEVELOPMENT).  The development of this environment is made possible only if the educator has the knowledge needed to use the resources effectively (UTILIZATION).  Blog posts where educators reflect on their own plans, as well as comments where educators examine their peers’ plans, builds skills in problem analysis and practice evaluation (EVALUATION) (AECT, 2001).

PART TWO: BLOG SELF-EVALUATION

The rubric for EDTECH 541 blog posts is broken down into four domains: Content, Reading and Resources, Timeliness, and Responses to Other Students.

For content, I would score myself closer to proficient between  proficient and outstanding.  I attempted to develop posts that were “rich in content” and “full of thought”; however, I feel that some posts lack the “depth and detail” necessary for an outstanding grading.  65/70

For reading and resources, I would score myself at proficient.  As I have learned APA formating this semester in EDTECH 501, I know that many of my references were incomplete or incorrect.  Comments to classmates’ posts were lacking of source references as well.  16/20

For timeliness, I would score myself at proficient.  Many of my posts made during the last few weeks of this semester were made on time, but with little time before the deadline to receive peer review.  16/20

For responses to other students, I would choose my score to be between proficient and outstanding.  I consciously made sure I made enough posts each week.  For some weeks, I made more than enough to meet the requirements.  However, references to readings or other sources could strengthen my comments to classmates’ blogs.  28/30    

TOTAL: 125/140 – 89/B

REFERENCES

Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). (2001). “What are the initial standards? Retrieved August 16, 2015, from http://www.aect.org/standards/initstand.html