I have truly enjoyed my impact of technology on the classroom course. While I have been involved in software development for more than ten years, I must admit I have not used a number of the collaborative tools that are currently available and I have not given them serious consideration in regards to student education. However, the course has truly helped me to stretch my paradigms in terms of educational tools and how they may be used. Admittedly, from a pure technological standpoint I can't say I have specifically developed my skills. However I have grown in terms of my insight in how to use some of these tools to enhance learning.
Because of the course materials and discussions, I have had a number of opportunities to visualize how communication technology can be used to improve classroom education. I have always been a collaborative teacher, but I was admittedly mired in the somewhat constricting mindset of collaboration among my own group of students. The course has helped me to see that we can now provide collaborative learning opportunities that reach far far beyond our own classrooms. I have learned how our young students have quietly and inexorably surpassed us in terms of technological savvy and I now understand that we teachers must make great efforts to stay with the pack in terms of new technologies that are emerging around us.
As I mentioned earlier, I have always been a collaborative teacher and I've always preferred that my students knowledge come from their own exercises and practices rather than through my lectures. However, I have admittedly been stymied many times by what I perceived as a lack of resources to provide rich and contextual learning units that can challenge students and give them opportunities to direct their own learning. Of course I know understand this limitation has been self-imposed due to a lack of creativity. Resources abound for teachers to create, borrow, or steal for their own students.
I believe the best way to continue my progress is to put into practical practice some of the great ideas fleshed out through our discussions. I gleaned several ideas from my classmates and I'd like to think I helped expand upon some thoughts they may have had as well. I want to stay abridged of the 21st century goals and I want to continue reading about the current and emerging technologies that may have educational applications. Thankfully, our exercises in RSS feeds provided all of us with a great way to stay abreast of these developments. I plan on continuing with my blog as my XML training curriculum continues to expand and hopefully some of my classmates will be interested enough to come check it out now and then to see how it's going. I also intend to keep up with their blog updates (again through RSS feeds.)
As for my long term goals. I've been very very fortunate. I have recently been informed that we have been approved for a budget request to enhance our training curriculum and resources. We will be purchasing 6 new netbook computers along with networking hardware and travel cases so we can take along a mobile computer lab on our training courses. These netbooks will be able to access the internet as well as a local network to pull resources for learning and practice. Further we've been told we may purchase a server where we will begin developing a specific Wiki to serve our customers' needs. We'll eventually enhance this wiki into a fully functional help-desk where our students may contact us live for questions.
As for long-term goals for the training program, aside from gathering the hardware and developing the wiki, I have been tasked with re-tooling the curriculum to create more collaborative and learner-centric courses. I intend to develop these courses such that the students may make use of the help-desk and our company resources right from the classroom so they may begin learning how to work on large-scale collaborative projects. I'll be working on individual lesson plans all the way up through the entire curriculum to create a highly interactive and dynamic series of courses.
Frankly, this would not have been possible had I not become so excited about the various tools and resources out there which my company can make use of for our training. My enthusiasm along with my new found ability to demonstrate the benefits of wiki's, blogs, podcasts and real-time remote conversation tools lead my management to approve the course upgrades. I'm excited to dive in and I look forward to the challenges of building this curriculum. I appreciate all your feedback and I hope to hear from you in the future.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
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