Reflection: New and Emerging Technologies: EDUC 6715

Upon reflection of my assignment created in Weeks 6 and 7, I have come to understand how difficult it can be to find technology resources that relate to my content areas and are meaningful to the end goal I want my students to reach. I also realize the important that technology and digital gaming can have on student success. According to Gee, games give children the tools they need to explore complex systems and experiment with different possibilities and outcomes (Hoffman, 2009). Games are a great way to engage students and enable them to master concepts without memorizing information that is given to them and later disregarding it. My completed assignment demonstrates what I have learned in this course because I have created a lesson around a new technology in education and explained why students will be using it along with how it will benefit them. I have also explained how this technology tool will help further develop 21st century skills and engage students in an authentic learning environment. I have included an explanation for how I can become a change leader by promoting how this technology will help my students and ways that my school can change their policies in order to permit this technology transformation to occur.

There are many adjustments that I will make in my efforts to identify emerging technologies with the potential to transform teaching and learning. I would like to collaborate with my colleagues to create a learning community where we can research and locate various technologies that we feel would be beneficial to our students. By collecting this information, we can share our findings with the administration and explain that by using more technology we can steer away from traditional textbooks. Christensen and Horn (2008) state that computers offer a way to customize instruction and allow students to learn in the way they are best wired to process information, in the style that conforms to them, and at a pace that matches their own. Why would administrators and teachers not want to use technology to allow students to learn in a way that is best for them? Through this learning community, we can influence other colleagues and our administration towards the adoption of new and emerging technologies in our school. Once technologies have been adopted, we can “test” them on a trial basis with teachers who are interested in implementing technology in their classrooms. They can become the experts who help train the others in the school. Another adjustment that I will make to incorporate educational technology to support 21st century learners will be to use the learning community to help share success stories with others about how technology has helped children be learners that are more successful. Reeves (2009) shares that in order to translate the research about teacher leadership and modeling into action, we must first provide examples, not policy mandates. Our learning community can collaborate with each other to assemble a resource of technology-rich lessons that are accessible through our school’s server. This can help educate others on the lessons and can be a resource to refer to while they are becoming more comfortable with using technology in their own classrooms. It is important to provide support for colleagues and not diminish the efforts they are putting forth to integrate technology into their instruction. We must all work together to convey the importance of technology in the classrooms and share the benefits it will have on student understanding and successful mastery of concepts.

References:

Christensen, C., & Horn, M. (2008). How do we transform our schools? Education Next, 8(3), 12–19.

Hoffman, L. (2009). Learning through games. Communication of the ACM, 52(8), 21–22.

Reeves, D. (2009). Model teachers. Educational Leadership, 66(5), 85–86.