ED 675C Course Reflection

      Overall, I am excited about the growth and progress I have made throughout this course. My participation in this course has helped me to become a better user of technology and I feel like I am better prepared to incorporate different technology into my classroom and encourage my students to use technology appropriately in the classroom.

     One significant change to my understanding about technology and how I am using technology in my classroom is my understanding about copy right. I am a little embarrassed to admit how little thought I gave to this topic in the past. While searching images to incorporate into a presentation to my students it never crossed my mind that the image I was inserting could actually be something I should not include. Through the class resources I now have a  better understanding of Fair Use Laws and copy right laws. I also feel strongly about how important it will be to teach these rules to my students. In the past, I have always talked about plagiarism in regards to a student's writing, now I can extend this to other media in projects we are completing in class.

    Additionally, this course has really helped to push my boundaries in regards to my use of social media and education. Although I have enjoyed looking at other's blogs and twitter accounts, this is not something I would have participated in without the push from this class. Now that I have a blog and a twitter account, I am very excited to be an active participate in these communities. I feel that I can better understand the value of PLN now that I have a twitter and am connecting with other educators. I am excited to continue to use my twitter account to share more ideas during the school year.

     Finally, I am so excited about the wide range of technology resources I have explored through this class. Because Canvas is the district paid platform, I had never explored Google sites. I am so excited with the class site I was able to create. It was so user friendly and I feel aesthetically pleasing for my students. I really enjoyed creating different projects on my site and I am excited to use them with my students in the upcoming school year. I also enjoyed exploring with Padlet and FlipSnack for some of my assignments. Also, I have loved hearing about other people's assignments. I feel like I have lots of ideas of new projects and am excited to explore the digital resources they shared. I feel that this class has truly helped expand my knowledge and understanding of educational technology and I can't wait to put my new knowledge to work in my classroom this year.

Artifact Reflection: Artifact #2 Multimedia Project

             Another artifact that I would like to share is my State Project. The purpose of this project was the inclusion of various multimedia elements. I chose to share this artifact because I think it will be a great element to be used in my classroom this year. I am proud of the look of the assignment and the ease of use for students to access on the google site.

                While completing this assignment, one challenged I encountered was becoming familiar with FlipSnack, the digital resource the project is based in. This resource has many great possibilities; however, it was not a user friendly as some of the other resources I have experimented with for this class. It took so trial and error to really understand the resource and be able to use it to create the project I wanted. Although it was challenging to work with, I still think this is one of my favorite artifacts from the class. There are so many possibilities of assignments that can be created with this resource; I did not want to abandon it because there were challenges. I look forward to continuing to explore this tool to better understand and utilize it in the future.

                I think this artifact will be a great addition to my social studies curriculum during the upcoming school year. I think this lesson really works to transform a previous lesson that has become tired as it has not been changed for years. Each student chooses a state that they will research and then provide information about. In the past this information is written in a paper and shared through a 3D project, a “parade float.” However, I think this brochure helps to take this project to another level through the multimedia shared within the context of the brochure. Students are able to add another element to their presentation.

                Overall, I think this artifact helps to show how I am continuing to broaden my use of different technology resources in the classroom. Additionally, I feel that this artifact also shows how I am working to use technology to improve my current curriculum, not incorporating technology for technology’s sake.

Artifact Reflection: Artifact #1 Collaborative Project

                One artifact that I created during this class was my Road Trip Project. The purpose of this assignment was to create a project where students would be working collaboratively. I chose this artifact because I am proud of the lesson I was able to create and am excited to use this assignment in my classroom during the upcoming school year.

                This artifact was one of the first assignments for this class. As such it held some challenges for me. One aspect of the assignment was creating a classroom site and utilizing a collaborative web tool. I have worked primarily in Canvas during the past few years, however, this seemed like a good opportunity to expand my knowledge of other technology resources. At first, I found the project challenging in that I was overwhelmed with options available and trying to determine what would be the best fit for my vision of my class site and the accompanying project. However, once I decided on a Google Site, I was impressed with how user friendly it was. I was happy with the aesthetics of the site, and I really felt that it made my project accessible to my students. Similarly, I struggled to determine the appropriate digital resource to best meet the needs of the project. However, once I got started with the Padlet, it appeared to be a good fit.

                I am excited to use this project with my fourth grade class this year. The social studies curriculum centers on identifying the five themes of geography of the five regions in the United States. It will be my first year teaching this curriculum and I believed this project will help get my students excited about learning more about the regions.

                Overall, I feel that this artifact is a great example of how my understanding about Educational Technology has improved. I feel that I took at topic (5 regions) that is already an element of current curriculum, and was able to transform it with technology to encourage a better understanding for my students. 

Technology Integration Models

Prior to this week’s readings, the only technology integration model or framework that I was familiar with was SAMR. After some training received through my district at the end of the 2016-2017 school year, this model really made sense to me. I felt that I understood the different meanings of each of the levels. While completing the readings for this week, I also enjoyed the connection made between the SAMR model and Bloom’s Taxonomy as described on the Common Sense Education website. I thought that this connection was a great way to evaluate lessons and extend lessons to really improve the use of technology in the classroom. However, as I continued to do additional reading, I felt the RAT model made even more sense to me. I really liked how it is very similar to SAMR, but seems to be a more simplified version.  Sean McHugh states:

 SAMR is almost impossible to pronounce, in English anyway, and while it's simpler than most, it can be simpler, without, I believe, losing anything that is crucial. I don't need to wrestle with the distinction between Augmentation and Modification, seriously—is it that important?

Although I think in theory it is important to be able to differentiate Augmentation and Modification to better understand the lesson you are creating, when it comes to day to day lesson creation I think the RAT model is just as valuable. I believe that when reflecting on lesson creation being able to determine if the lesson is Replacement, Augmented or Transformed is easier and just as valuable. By determining a lesson is simply replacement reminds the teacher I can take it further, while realizing a lesson is transformed is a realization that you are truly using the technology to the best of your ability. I additionally like the additional diagram McHugh creates that continues to make the model user friendly:

R :: replacement | redundant | retrograde
A :: augmented | average | acceptable
T :: transformed | terrific | tremendous

I feel that this little chart just helps to reinforce the idea that it is not always possible or desirable to work at the highest level,  but we at lease want to augment the assignments we are creating.

            In general, I feel that my use of technology falls into the augmented category of the RAT model. I feel that very rarely or never fall into the replacement category. I really do not like to use technology for technology’s sake. I think that this mentality prevents me from falling into this lower level category. I feel that many of my lesson fall into the augmented category. I have changed lessons to improve on them through the use of technology. I feel that some of the lessons that I have created for this class will take my teaching to the transformed lesson. It is my goal to incorporate more transformed lessons into my classroom next year. I feel with the increase of technology with the district going 1:1 will make the feasibility of this easier. I also feel that to create lessons that truly fit into the transformed category requires an understanding of technology. When you truly understand the technology resources available, I think you are better able to incorporate them into your classroom and transform your lessons and take them to the higher level.

Resources:

McHugh, S. (2014, April 09). The RAT, SAMr, Transformative Technology, & Occam's Razor. Retrieved July 18, 2017, from http://doverdlc.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-rat-samr-transformative-technology.html

Puentedure, R. (2014, September 24). SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy: Assembling the Puzzle. Retrieved July 18, 2017, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/blog/samr-and-blooms-taxonomy-assembling-the-puzzle