CEP 811 Final Reflection

     This class has been very informative and I am taking away things that I want to implement into my classroom now. I have learned that when it comes to teaching effectively, you must think about alot of factors that come into play. Not only with your students, but with the resources that are available to you. You must be able to reach every student in your class and be able to provide some sort of modifications for those who need it. It is always a good rule of thumb to have a back up plan when technology happens to fail. Even though technology is growing and more and more teachers are integrating it into their lesson, technology can be unpredictable. My advice is to plan as if technology will not work and you will be covered for the day and not have to scramble to produce an unmeaningful assignment.

     I try with every lesson to see how I can integrate technology into the lesson, especially when every student on our high school campus has one. I try to think of ways to stay connected to my students away from school hours that will help maximize their learning potential.  For example, having set hours that I will be available online to connect over question they may be having over an assignment. With technology, I try to use it as a tool to help promote self discipline with students and put a little responsibility on the student. With technology, I now can come into class and not say a word about the assignment because I have produce all the information they will need through presentation and now tutorials that I have been introduced to.

     I have met by goal about technology integration by learning something new in each session. I am especially excited about creating tutorials for my classes to go through. Being able to create tutorials will allow me to teach my co-workers how to implement them into their curriculum, thus giving me more knowledge to become a major role in our districts technology improvement team.

     My goal for my next course is to learn a new technological integration technique that I will be able to use immediately and to find a better to improve on what I am already doing in class. That way I will be able to adapt to all the new changes that are rising to the surface and into the hands of our students. My long term goal is to continue to learn from professors and classmates because we all have something valuable that we can share with one another.

Sharing Online Teaching Experiences

     Our Middle School principal has been pushing for 8th grader to develop an ePortfolio that they will be able to update throughout the rest of their high school education.
The class that integrated this online experience with is Career Explorations. I have about 60 students that will have started a electronic portfolio that they can carry with them anywhere they go.
     Strategies that I use with my students are taken step by step. We are currently creating pages for every major subject that they are enrolled in as of now. We are taking class work that they have completed and uploaded to their portfolio to broadcast their work from various classes. I am encouraging students to be creative and separate themselves from other students who have portfolios. I have taught students the importance to what should be added and what should not be added. Along with what images are appropriate and which ones should be displayed for the world to see.
     We are finding it difficult to add PowerPoint slides that they have created for others classes. We recently ran upon a stumbling block when every student lost work that they saved on their school issued z drives. All of the work that they had saved previously was gone over night. As a class, we were able to go to their teachers and find copies of work that has been turned in and graded. As a district, we hope to see how students develop and how detailed and crisp their work become over the course of their high school years , and what updates the students will add.