Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

Susana Calero

Edison State College

Abstract

I have learned a great variety of different skills in Introduction to Technology in Education this past semester. In my paper I will describe my thoughts about my course, I will also reflect on the activities, assignments, discussions, textbook, and the learning objectives. I came into the classroom with a belief that I already knew about the world of technology, however, once the class began, I was submerged in a world of technology that I had no prior knowledge, thanks to this course, and my professor, Marie Coleman, I will be able to enhance my skills and use the tools that I acquired in this course as a future teacher.

                                                           Reflective Essay                

           When I signed up for the course Introduction to Technology, without much depth in thought, I expected it to be class where I would be taught how to use technology to be able to teach my future students, on the basic level.

        Once I was in the classroom, I quickly realized that there wasn’t anything basic about Introduction to Technology considering that my first assignment was to create a rubric on an educational website. I wasn’t sure what the approach would be for this assignment, I had never created one, and therefore, I did some research on the assignment. This class allowed me to discover, to be able to go beyond the assignment that professor Coleman had assigned to her students. In the class time that we shared as a classroom on Thursday nights, Professor Coleman described her projects very thorough, and covering different areas of the project where her students may have had a problem.

         I knew from the beginning that I would be a class that you can not afford to be absent, due to the fact that there would be so much material being covered.  I had to miss one class this semester, however, that did not intimidate me because on the Wiki Page that is on the web, I was able to complete the assignment, thanks to how well the descriptions are on Professor Coleman’s Wiki Page. Rubrics were always available for all assignments, which was very beneficial as a student completely the assignment to be able to determine exactly the areas professor wanted us to cover.

        The projects varied in this class, from creating our own twenty slide PowerPoint, to a collaborative lesson plan, to creating a collaborative Wiki page, I was always so indulged in the assignments, I truly enjoyed doing each assignment and receiving feedback from my professor, the feedback always helped because I was able to determine where my strengths and my weaknesses were. My overall favorite assignment was the PowerPoint Presentation, in the beginning I thought it would be difficult to decide on a topic that I would be able to stretch to twenty slides, however, I decided upon a topic that would be beneficial for myself to go over, so much information needed to be covered, that I did not have a problem making twenty slides to present to my class.

When I presented my PowerPoint to my class, I really felt like the teacher, I made my PowerPoint on Sugar Gliders, just as I learned about Sugar Gliders by owning them, I wanted to teach my classmates and teacher about these great creatures.

      The final project was a to create a Teacher’s Portfolio, this was a great assignment because we could become any teacher, teach any level, any material, and it was a great approach to really making a webpage for the students in the classroom, as well as for the parents of the students. I have a prodigious experience making my Portfolio because  I was able to create my “future” classroom through the internet.

            Through the semester, and in between class assignments, we had to create our own Journal Posts blogs, on Blogger, I enjoyed making these blogs because it was a reinforcement about the chapter for myself, at least the first few post were based on the chapters on the book, and as week six approached, I started branching out on the blogs and wrote on different topics including: WebQuest, evaluating educational blog post, and to watch educational videos, the fact that the blog post were designated for us to be able to express and summarize what we have watched, evaluated or read, became very beneficial to create a strong foundation.

         The textbook: Transforming Learning with New Technologies, was a book that I felt was truly dedicated for an individual with little knowledge of the technology that teachers are using, and will be using in the future, which made it easy to understand with little questioning.

       Discussion posts were meant for the students to create a post on Canvas, and I am glad that we had that transition to canvas, because it made it accessible for all the students to read and post regarding the subject, the post in my opinion were not my favorite, I enjoyed reading the opinions of my classmates and I did enjoy being able to give my opinion on the topic, but I believe that I learned more in the classroom, creating projects or reading the textbook and creating blogs.

             In between all of the assignments, projects, creative commons, blog posts, and everything in between, I had my grade for the class with a quick look at the website that we had been provided, this was my first class that my professor provided the grade throughout the semester. The access to our grades was a great way to know how we did on the assignment, as well as the feedback that professor Coleman provided, as I mentioned earlier.

        I appreciated learning about the many different websites that I had never heard of before, or the different names for a slide show: Pecha Kucha PowerPoint Presentation.

 I took this class because it is a requirement for the teaching bachelors, however, even if I didn’t have this class as a requirement, I would have enjoyed taking it to be able to be knowledge in the technology that we have at our fingertips in the society we live in. To end the reflection as this course was started, Professor Coleman said the first class: “ You will only get out of this class, what you put in.”

-->