A Reflection on the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society

As this course, Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society, draws to a close, I have taken some time to reflect on what I have learned in the last seven weeks. I have been considering how this course of study has impacted my growing technological aptitude, my knowledge of how to integrate technology in my classroom, as well as how I plan to become a “teacher leader” in the area of technology integration going forth.

This course has helped me to develop my own technology skills as a professional teacher, and I have deepened my knowledge of a teaching and learning approach that utilizes technology. I have learned how to create a blog, such as this one. I can now incorporate a wiki into collaborative classroom projects. I also learned how to record a podcast and incorporate podcasting into classroom learning activities. These Web 2.0 tools have facilitated powerful changes in my pedagogy and the content that I teach. This course helped me understand the distinction between doing things differently and doing different things with technology, which will dramatically help inform my teaching practice. I am not just using these new forms of technology to teach the same old things that I used to; Instead, as Dr. David Thornburg describes, the power comes when I utilize technology to do different, creative things (Laureate Education, 2010).

The learning resources in this course really emphasized being less teacher-centered and becoming more learner-centered. I have always preferred to use a learner-centered approach in my classroom because I feel that it meets the individual needs of each student, improves a child’s motivation to learn, and is more active, with students constantly engaged in the learning process.  I always try to engage my students in learning through activities like role-playing, discussing, researching, and collaborating on projects with one another and their teacher.  Now, with the knowledge gained through this course, I can also integrate the use of blogs, wikis, and podcasts into my teaching repertoire to create learner-centered activities that integrate technology in meaningful ways. This course opened my eyes to the fact that as technology advances, so must my instructional approaches. I must constantly enhance my teaching repertoire and find new, creative, and inventive ways to use technology to bring information to students in interactive and engaging ways. I have found that using technology has made teaching more interesting and stimulating for me, as the teacher, but also for my students. It is very is gratifying to see the enjoyment and pride that students exhibit when they have learned new things while using technology.

We live in a digitally-driven society. Technology is everywhere, touching almost every part of our lives in this modern day. Yet, I have experienced a profound gap between the knowledge and skills learned in school and the skills required for this 21^st century global society.  I teach in a poverty-stricken urban district where our classrooms are frequently lacking in technology resources for student learning. This challenge of inadequate technology resources for students is what has motivated me to get my Master’s degree in technology integration at Walden University.  I am determined to know the latest, greatest, and ultimately best practices that will help my students acquire the 21^st century skills that they will need to be successful in the future.  This course has helped me understand the importance and necessity of technology usage in the classroom to prepare students for the demands of the 21^st century workplace. After this course, I plan to continue to expand my knowledge of learning, teaching, and leading with technology. I have made it my main objective to design and develop a learning environment that integrates various technology tools and applications to enrich students’ learning experiences. 

Continuing education is the first component of my plan to address the challenges associated with teaching 21st-century skills in today’s schools and in my classroom. In addition to educating myself and completing this Master’s program at Walden University, I have set two additional long-term goals that I feel will help transform my classroom environment. My first goal is to introduce podcasting to my entire elementary school as a means for students to communicate information, enhance their technology skills, and develop their speaking and listening abilities.  According to Tony Vincent (2009), author of Podcasting for Teachers & Students, “Knowing that there is a real-world audience gives students purpose and motivation to create a spectacular product. The process of putting together an audio recording is extremely valuable and is certainly a cross-curricular experience.”  Although we have the capability and components, podcasting is a technology tool that is not being utilized in my school.  Teachers may not be informed of the many uses and benefits that podcasting can bring to our educational setting. As a teacher leader, and our science and technology area-specialist, I plan to accomplish this goal by educating other teachers on ways to implement podcasting in the classroom.  I will encourage teachers in my school to begin using podcasting as a forum for documenting field trips, recording class discussions, sharing book reviews, conducting interviews, or to review curricular content (Vincent, 2009).  Within the next two years, I plan to develop a club that delivers the school news through a weekly podcast.  Instead of a traditional newspaper club, this podcast club will allow students to work collaboratively and with technology to report news stories and current events with their classmates and with a potentially world-wide audience. Podcasts give students a new way to construct learning artifacts, work collaboratively, and can empower them to be creative and innovative. This course has shown me how technology, like podcasting, can further facilitate the construction of knowledge, and I am so excited to introduce my students to this tool to yield rich learning experiences.

As a kindergarten teacher, I have the pleasure and the challenge of exposing my students to technology within their earliest school experiences.  My second goal is to create a Kindergarten Blog for my classroom. My students are new to reading and writing, and at first, this technology could be a little advanced for my five- and six-year old students' capabilities, but I still think that it is very important to expose them to this vital technology at an early age. I hope that with continual exposure throughout the year, my students will become familiar and comfortable with blogging, and by the end of the year, they will be to publish their own writing to the blog. The great thing about blogs is that students can work at their own pace and ability level. Some of my students may be able to write only a sentence, while others can write a short story.  This class blog will be a beneficial resource to introduce my young students to the world of blogging.

My blog will also be a resource to parents and families. I will also use the class blog to post pertinent information like calendars, daily schedules, upcoming events, homework assignments, and various home enrichment activities. It will be a forum for caregivers to check-in for the latest updates, stay informed of current kindergarten events, and ask any questions that they may have. I also plan to use the blog as tool to point parents in the direction of free resources and opportunities while linking them to learning websites that they can use with their children to practice and reinforce language and math skills. I also plan to use the space to share digital photographs of learning experiences and publish examples of exemplary student work to showcase the learning and growth that is occurring throughout the school year. I am excited about the possibilities, and I cannot wait to employ a blog for use in my classroom! It will be so much fun to discover all the new directions this technology can take my instruction and my interactions with families.

In the first week of this course, I was asked to complete a “Self-Assessment Technology Checklist” to assist me in assessing my own skills and practices regarding integrating technology in the classroom. Looking back on this checklist, I have found that my answers have not drastically changed after completing this course.  I entered this course with an open mind and an understanding of the importance of incorporating technology in the classroom. If anything has changed, it would be my proficiency in the usages of various forms of technology and my enthusiasm for integrating technology.  This course has truly reenergized my approaches to instruction.  I am so excited to construct a classroom learning environment that infuses technology like wikis, blogs, and podcasting. I know that these tools will help me foster the foundational 21st-century skills that my students will require for success in the future.  I plan to use the technology-focused knowledge, strategies, and skills that I learned in this course to create the most effective, motivational, and technologically advanced learning environment possible.  “Classrooms in the 21st century need to be collaborative spaces where student-centered knowledge development and risk taking are accepted as the norm and where an ecology of learning develops and thrive” (Nussbaum-Beach, 2008).

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). The emergence of educational technology. Baltimore, MD: David Thornburg, Ed.D.

Nussbaum-Beach, S. (2008). No limits. Technology & Learning, 28(7), 14–18. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/no-limits/44886

Vincent, T. (2009) Podcasting for teachers & students. Retrieved from http://learninginhand.com/storage/podcasting_images/Podcasting_Booklet.pdf