EDTECH 543: Final Reflection

During this course I learned how to incorporate various forms of social media and networking into my classroom.  I have used Facebook as a personal communication tool for years, but now understand the options have it provides for professional development.  Before this course I never thought about curation outside of a museum and found the different curation tools useful and ended up liking Pearltrees the best.  My favorite part of this course was the online professional development.  The Twitter chats were good, but I really enjoyed the online learning.  The courses took on Google, Minecraft and virtual learning were great resources for the future.  I had a positive experience with my PLN mini group.  They were helpful, on task and we were able to create a mini unit that worked for language arts, history, and science.  Peer collaboration reminds me of my school and working together to figure out the best way to help our students is beneficial.

There are a variety of ways I plan on applying the information I learned to my professional practices.  Unfortunately my school is very strict when it comes to the types of technology used in the school, especially social media.  My students are not allowed to have any personal devices at school or on field trips (i.e. they go to Washington, D.C. in 8th grade - not phones allowed).  I believe that I will be able to add to the conversation in a positive way on how to incorporate personal technologies and social media into the middle school.  My technology goal for this school year is to use Google Classroom as the platform for each of my classes.  We use SchoolSpeak to currently communicate, but I loved the setup of Google Classroom and saw the potential in the peer review I did on the Science of Sound mini unit.  I plan on continuing to use YouTube to incorporate effective (and fun) video clips to help my students understand the concepts they are being taught.  The online learning I participated in on virtual field trips is where I will pull most of my information from this course.  There were so many great sites and ideas to incorporate into my history classroom that will help engage my students.

I understand the purpose of self-assessments, but always feel a little uncomfortable grading myself.  During this course I completed all the expected information in my blogs, but I tried to add some personal information where I could.  I embedded my Google Slides, images, and other visuals to make it easy to view.  Allow with the embedded information, I also added links to make it easier for those who may have trouble viewing it depending on the device they are using.  So I truly feel I completed all that was required of my blogging and sometimes went beyond the basic expectations.  I would grade myself a 74/75 because I understand there is always room for improvement and I'm not sure I can give myself 100%.