EDLD 5306 Course Reflection

After EDLD 5306, I feel that I have a broad range of 21^st century skills to incorporate into my classroom .  I envisioned learning how to integrate technology into my educational environment and how to use data-based decisions, sources, policies, and research, including the Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology, the STaR Chart, and Technology Applications TEKS, to develop, implement, and promote a vision that focus on the needs of all students learning in the 21^st century. I achieved how to complete self-evaluation tools in technology to help me understand my strengths and weakness in using and teaching. I learned how to make, model and use Web 2.0 tools to facilitate school improvement and student achievement within the social, legal and ethical issues through safety practices. This course aligned with creating, participating and facilitating learning communities such as wikis and blogs that supported the integration of technology in the learning environment.  

The achieved outcomes helped me maintain an inclusive and organized process to develop, implement, and monitor a cohesive, long range, and systemic technology plan to achieve the vision for student success.  My decisions must give priority to teaching student about safety, curriculum and instruction that focus on all resources, such as Web 2.0 technologies, by using data driven decision-making with attention on equality.  As an 21^st Century educator, I must demonstrate the ability to communicate and use data-based research strategies in a variety of formats, such as online learning communities, blogs, and wikis. These outcomes are relevant to my teaching because I can integrate, use, and improve the educational technologies in the classroom based on our campus needs assessments.  Finally, these tools can help create on-going technology needs assessments, protect student safety, find and use resources that recognize the needs of the digital-age student, and determine effective tools for improvement.

One outcome that I did not achieve was being able to apply these new skills at school because of the filters installed by the district.   Another was the evaluation and supervision of effective technology usage and integration strategies in the curriculum on a daily basis because the availability of adequate connectivity in schools and classroom to use technology resources are not available to implement new strategies, such as Wordle.  In this course, I was able to achieve all the necessary requirements to help me improve my students learning.  I learn how relevant it is to use technology to teach because I need to be knowledgeable about how to provide instruction in the 21^th century and not the 20^th century model of “one-size fit all”.  After looking at everything, my outcomes from this course were achieved completely.  Finally, the weekly web conferences provided me with interaction with classmates and the professor were very useful.

I summarized the key ideas of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology and the four strands of the Technology Applications TEKS.  I evaluated the School Technology and Readiness Charts to determine the current technology status of our campus to help determine the current positive and negative technology trends.    I practiced how to embed Animoto video into a wikis and use e-communication tools, such as blogging and RSS feed, to reflect on the district technology plan.  After learning how to set up a Wiki account, I learned how to invited classmates to join a learning community to collaborate for the purpose of improving our professional curriculum vita.  As an administrator I must assess requisite skill for implementation of the Technology TEKS in grades K-8.   TEKS was designed to spiral giving students multiple opportunities to master the knowledge and skills. Finally, I learned how to use Wordle to create word clouds. 

I learned how to identify the source, location, relevancy and content validity of information and to participate in an online learning community as learner, initiator and facilitator. Leadership skills help me to analyze, evaluate and develop a theme for a wiki home page and how to blog.  I learned how important it is for the leader to research, model, evaluate and use technology resources on a daily basis.  As a leader, I am responsible for steering the course of our 21st century schools by making a personal commitment to get training and mastering the knowledge and skills required from an educational leader.  The analysis of the course helped me to understand how important it is for me promote technology in my classroom.  This course helped to advocate for all educators and learners to have the technology infrastructure to help them connect to the global world, their community, businesses and other schools.