Week 5 Course Reflection

I was both pleased and stressed about this course. I had not envisioned the entire course dealing with technology. I envisioned a more all-around approach to instructional leadership, such as more work with PDAS, and how as an administator I could improve how instruction is being provided in the classroom. I expected to learn more things about resources I could use to evaluate teachers and instructional practices. I did learn how to study documents such as the STaR chart and my district's Campus Improvement Plan and technology plan to align curriculum and professional development needs. For example, I was not aware that the STaR chart results were published online. I was able to study the results from my campus, which was both interesting and insightful.

The use of technology is extremely important in today's educational society. This course was beneficial in outlining the positive things and the dangers of using technology. It was not presented from one part of view, which made me think about things I had not thought of before with the use of technology. A great example of this in the reading some of the articles. Although the articles were very time consuming and I believe a little much, they did force me to think about things, such as the importance of password security and the implications. I also was not aware of how extensive the copyright laws are, and how they affect education. This of course is relevant to my use today. It is important that I stay informed so I can keep my students informed.

I still feel like I need a lot of work with staying updated on technology. I would love to learn more about blogs and wikis and how I can safely use them in my class. I believe it would be interesting to do a trial cross-curriculum lesson using blogs. I would also have liked more time to look more extensively at my district's technology plan and how they intend on upgrading technology in terms of the budget. I also think it would be interesting to see how standards of technology differ among the campuses within the district. I have a feeling that there is a discrepancy between the high schools that are considered rich, compared to the high schools that are considered poor.

The course assignments were tough in terms of what needed to be done in the time that was allotted. Most of the assignments would have been feasible for a semester-long course where data could really be studied extensively. I felt like between my "real job," requirements in this course, the holidays, and time allottment (a five week course) I could have done a better job if I had more time. The time that I had to allot for this class was almost double what I have had to set aside for most of the other courses I have taken.

I believe I learned how to think more outside of the box in this course. Technology is a relatively new horizon. I often complain that adminstrators at my school are too often reactive instead of being proactive. I learned it is harder than what it seems in this course because these are ideas that are new and some untested. It was difficult to compose a professional development plan that I believe would help every faculty member, not just most of them. Although this is difficult, it is imperative that a good administrator is able to do this.

In my opinion, we in the education world are about to see a dramatic rise in the use of blogging. As more and more safety features are added, teachers are going to be able to use blogging to communicate and facilitate learning in an entirely new way. We may actually see students doing their homework! Blogging will allow us to approach those "old timey" assignments in a new way that is appealing to students of this generation.

Anything that is online is scary. It can be difficult to monitor if the teacher is not an active participant in the blogging. I am apprehensive about blogging in terms of age appropriateness. I believe very young students(maybe Kindergarten until second grade) and very mature aged students (sophomores in high school and up) will be better bloggers in terms of keeping cyber bullying to a minimum. Cyber bullying and students not understanding cyber ethics is probably my biggest worry with blogging. I do not feel like I am technologically savy enough prevent or deal with problems that could arise.

I would love to see blogging become a normal way of communicating between school personnel. It would be wonderful if the adults of a school system actually model and use the technology that we require of our students. This would help in becoming more comfortable with the use of technology. I also believe it would open up an entire new world the new and older teachers for colloboration purposes. The opportunities are endless!