EDLD+5364+Final+Assessment

1. What outcomes had you envisioned for this course? Did you achieve those outcomes? Did the actual course outcomes align with those that you envisioned?  The course is titled Teaching with Technology so I envisioned it would be all about how to use technology in my day-to-day lessons, and that is just what we have done. I learned that technology is an enormous tool for all learners, from the “smartest” to the most challenged learners. I have learned through the UDL lesson that it is easy to incorporated technology into any lesson.  I think that the course objectives and outcomes were achieved. I feel confident that I will use technology in all my lessons to try to help every student achieve their learning goals. When I first saw that the whole class was based on a group project, I was not excited. Group projects are hard to do and especially when you never get to see each other or have a specific class time to meet. Overall, it turned out great. For the most part I had a super group and everybody did their part accept one person, but our project turned out perfectly anyway.   2. To the extent that you achieved the outcomes, are they still relevant to the work that you do in your school? Why or why not?  I have achieved my outcomes for this class and they are relevant to the work that I do. I am the technology department in my school. I teach all the technology classes in our high school. I use technology everyday and this class has taught me how to use it more efficiently. I have learned how to use the Web 2.0 tools that are so important to our student’s lives today. I have many special education students and I have learned some new tools that will help me to help them understand the lessons that I am teaching. It does not matter to me if a student can show me how to save a document in Word or tell me how, just as long as they can answer the question. The UDL lesson builder has helped me to better incorporate technology for all my students into my lessons every day. I think technology will be relevant to everyone no matter what his or her job is today. We worked on a group project for most of the class and my team used wikis, Google docs, a Google site, and email to communicate our thoughts and ideas. That seems to work very well.     3. What outcomes did you not achieve? What prevented you from achieving them?  The whole purpose of the this class is to teach us to better use technology in our classrooms and I think technology is important, but I do not think that I achieve the whole aspect of the class. I was confused on the group assignment most of the time. The directions were not real clear on the assignment, but I made it through ok I guess. I liked learning about the UDL lesson planner and I can see where it would be very helpful, but with the many other things that teacher are required to do I would not have enough time to plan each and every lesson using this method. It took a long time to actually write it all out. I do most of those things in my lessons anyway so I felt like I was wasting my time having to write it out. I could be doing one of the other million things that I am required to do. The outcome on our group project was good, despite the lack of getting to meet in person. I am not a fan of group project when we do not have a set class time or get to see each other in person. That makes it difficult to get the project done in a timely manner. You are always waiting on some to answer your question. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">4. Were you successful in completing the course assignments? If not, what prevented or discouraged you? <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">I was successful in completing the assignments, however most of them were group assignment and we had one person in our group who did almost nothing to help. She always had so excuse why she had not finished her part. That is the one reason I do not like group assignments. However, my group members and I did manage to complete our group project. The assignments that I had to do that were not with the group were very interesting. I loved the book builder and will be using it my class. I can see how it could help the students to review the lesson if they absent or at the end of the six weeks. The book builder can be used by all students to show what they have learned in class as well. There was a lot of reading, but it seemed to go fast because it was very relevant to the course and interesting to learn about. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">5. What did you learn from this course: about yourself, your technology and leadership skills, and your attitudes? <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">During this course, I learned that I do not know as much about technology as I should. I know the old ways of technology and it has changed a great deal since I was in school. I learned different ways to use technology to help all my students, from the gifted and talented to the special education students. One assignment does not meet the needs of all these students. Meeting the needs of all the students is something that I am week in. It takes a lot more time to plan a lesson for five different types of learners than to plan with the attitude “either they will get this way or to bad”. I was the leader of my group and that was tough, but I think I did a good job of keeping our group on track. There was one person who did not do their part in our group, but as they say “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Our group project could have been better if we had more technology examples to view. We had many great ideas, but no real examples that you could see. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">