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Personal Goals for the Semester

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What a semester this has been! Not only have I learned about so many new technologies that I can use in my classroom, but I have had the opportunity to engage in some new technologies in my personal life as well. Below you will find each of the goals I set for myself and how well, or no so well, these went for me! Goal #1: Make videos for each of the classes I teach At the beginning of the semester the counselors at Hudsonville High School came to the teachers and asked them to develop videos for their classes. The purpose of these videos were to put them on the website so that students were able to watch them to find out what the class was all about so that they knew what classes to register for. This was a daunting task for me! I don't have much (if any) experience with video editing software. After a less than successful attempt at using iMovie, I decided to do a simple Quicktime video. Using the "New Screen Recording" feature, I was able to talk my way through a...
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Emerging Trends in Educational Technology

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What are the emerging trends in educational technology? I think that one of the major emerging trends in educational technology is not "what" students are learning, but instead "how" they are learning. We have begun the take the locus of control away from the teachers and move it to the students. Technology has allowed students to take ownership of their learning. They now that technologies that will give them immediate feedback as to whether "they got it" and they have a wide world of places to gain more information. I have said many times while taking this class just how jealous I am of the opportunities that kids have now that I didn't in the past! How do they reshape the culture of learning and teaching? I think, and hope, that with this changed ownership, students will take more of an interest in their learning. We spent so many years giving them information, much of it on things that they weren't really interested i...
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What is a participatory culture?

The idea of a participatory culture is not necessarily a new idea, but the it's expansion in the world of social media has made it a prominent topic in the world of education. In a participatory culture it is one in which, very simply, everyone participates. Students are encouraged to produce and share various forms of media and through so, learn from each other. There may be a media that another student isn't familiar with, or an idea another student hadn't previously thought of, and a participatory culture encourages this sharing.  It's a social mode of production. Communities can also produce media together and then share them among themselves, or even to a larger community outside of just their classroom. I think there are a lot of ways that I could incorporate more of this into my classroom. My Sports Marketing class organizes charity events as part of their curriculum. The students could do a better job of getting on social media to get the word about the cause,...
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Immersive Learning: Creating "an" Experience

I found the Dewayan perspective to be very fascinating and as I read the article it made me really question why I do different things in my classroom. According the Deway, there are two types of experiences: ordinary experiences and "an" experience. Ordinary experiences are ones that occur continuously, they are part of the process of living, not composed into an experience and are often stopped because of some type of interruption. In your daily life these are things that occur but don't really affect your daily routine and perhaps are things that you didn't really learn anything from. In your classroom these would be considered assignments which are just done to be done. Students may not find a purpose to these types of assignments, or they may not find the connection between the assignment and an overall learning objective. "An" experiences, on the otherhand, are those that are learned through experience not memorization. These experiences run their c...
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Wise Integration of Technology

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TPACK At first I found the definition of the TPACK method to be somewhat overwhelming, but after finding the next image, and unpacking it, I find it to be an excellent method of looking at how you do things in your classroom. Content: Essentially content is just the teacher's knowledge of the subject matter. This should be an obvious thing that teachers have, but it's not just a basic knowledge, it's a deep knowledge of the subject so much so that you know (as the image shows) facts, theories, concepts and procedures. I always think to myself, "do I know more than my students?" and "what questions might they ask that could stump me?" Pedagogy: Pedagogy looks beyond whether the teacher knows the content, but rather do they know how to deliver that content. There are plenty of brilliant people who would struggle in this area because they lack the ability to actually present the material in a way that students will gain the most out of their teachin...
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Does Technology Influence Education?

The first thing that struck me about these two articles is how well the authors knew each other and how well versed they were in what the other's viewpoint was on the topic. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with points that both authors made. However, in the end, I believe I agree with Kozma's View of technology than Clark's. Clark's description made me reminisce of growing up in the 80s and 90s. I grew up in a very big school district and one that had many resources that others did not have. I had the opportunity to participate in academically talented programs, we had a math & science center for high school students and I can remember having multiple computer classes at my disposal. In my regular classes we didn't have much technology wise, but I remember feeling like the teachers had done a great job preparing me for college just by the work that they put in and with their teaching methods. I think Clark would have said that I "turned out so wel...
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