EDLD+5306+&+5333+Embedded+Assignments+and+Reflection

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 * EDLD 5306 Concepts of Educational Technology**

Both of these assignments came at a very beneficial time in my teaching career, my entrance into the Academic Partnerships Program coincided with my switching schools and switching grade levels. Last year was my first year where I was held accountable for TAKS scores. Until last year, I had never had to look carefully at TEKS or do any sort of planning outside of weekly lesson plans. The assignments took place in November, which is right around the time that my campus starts putting plans in action for the TAKS test so the timing really helped me both at work and in the class.

The most important thing that I took from the Week 1 assignment was how indepth the TEKS are, especially compared to the TEKS that I was accustomed to using as a high school spanish teacher. This helped me realize how much there is to do when integrating technology into instruction.

I took a lot away from the Week 2 assignment as well, especially in regards to how much work needs to be done to improve the technology accessible to students and the technology training of the staff. This assignment gave me a first hand look at what the digital divide really is and where it can occur.

Now that I have completed my reflections on Technology Standards I & II, I can see how these standards were incorporated into the assignments. The assignments which by now seem very basic in comparison to the work that we can do now were very slowly introducing us to the Technology Standards, especially Standard I.

@http://docs.google.com/View?id=dggtpmb5_10dgtb32gj
 * EDLD 5333 Leadership for Accountability**

What I originally gained from this assignment was how difficult it is to plan a __quality__ staff development that not only makes good use of time, but is interesting and engaging for the audience. The first step was defining my goal, what exactly did I want to accomplish during the staff development. By having a clearly defined goal, I could make sure that every activity that I planned contributed to achieving the goal that I set. The next step was to schedule the staff development, I had to make sure that the activities were neither too long nor too short, I had to make sure I conveyed the information in an appropriate amount of time.

After the schedule was set, I had to determine who were the key players in the staff development, which personnel on campus could help reach that goal, and what role would they fill. One person can not do everything in a staff development, no one is an expert on everything, and no audience is going to want to hear the same voice all day long.

It is safe to say that had I not entered into the Educational Technology program, I would not have experienced many of the outcomes outlined in Standard I. When word spread around campus that I was in a technology based graduate program I quickly became a second technology skills specialist on campus. I became enlisted to help many teachers with a lot of their basic computer needs and trouble shooting (i.e. setup, cables, error messages, file saving and sharing, etc.). I was also able to share a lot of ideas with teachers about some different Web 2.0 tools that I had learned about in the program. This gave me a lot of experience with standards 1.A.1 and 1.A.2
 * Standard I Reflections- **

Where I was able to start getting more indepth with what I had learned in the program and where I was able to share more with the staff was when I joined the Positive Behavior Support or PBS Committee. As a member of the PBS committee I have prepared several presentations for both the school staff and outside members of the district. I have been able to take some of what I have learned to create more interactive and appealing presentations than the standard powerpoints that most people are accustomed to.

I would love to say that my technology experiences on campus have been deeply creative and inspiring, but the truth is that they have been mostly basic and maintenance oriented. It has been my experience that the teachers on my campus closely reflect the teachers in a lot of the articles that I have read, where technology is mainly for administrative purposes. I attribute this to the culture of the school, where the academic focus is on test preparation, workbooks, etc. Novel instruction (i.e. computer usage or literature) is frowned upon unless a tie in to TAKS is immediately evident.

In my experience on campus, TAKS is king, and technology and computer use tend to come into play during the last month of school when time finally permits, and teachers are looking for a way to keep students busy. Even though I don’t feel that I have become a true technology leader on my campus due to circumstances, I feel that I have received a lot of the training necessary to become a technology leader. If I stay on my current campus, I feel that with time I have the skills necessary to slowly bring the necessary changes to my campus.

My experiences with the course work however were much different, the assignments allowed me to show my growing skill set, especially with ease of communication with such applications as google docs, wikis, and blogs. My coursework experiences with Technology Standard I started right away, our first class is an obvious example, but EDLD 5365 Web Mastering in my opinion was much more important. EDLD 5365 forced me to really take an “in-depth” look at policy and how to manage internet resources for a district . Standard II Reflections- ** Technology Standard II was addressed in my opinion as I progressed into the second half of the program. The easiest example for me to point to is the work I did in EDLD 5364 Teaching with Technology, not only a very important class, but one of my personal favorites, as it was very enjoyable. UDL lessons were very informative and thought provoking, even if I did design the lessons with the ‘ideal classroom’ in mind. What made this lesson so valuable was it focused on meaningful instruction with seamless integration of technology as well as using the appropriate TEKS .
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Another important aspect of this assignment was the fact that this was a group assignment done without any face to face contact between myself and my three group members. The technology allowed for excellent communication and teamwork where everyone worked well together, was focused, and communicated freely and openly. Even though we were communicating via long distance Web 2.0 tools, our personalities were easily seen and that helped make the project much more enjoyable .

What this makes me think about is how 4 people who have never met before can work so well together under unfamiliar circumstances (long distance e-communication), while on my own campus lines of communication can be easily fractured and simple things such as emails must be continuously clarified. What changes need to be made on my campus not only to improve technology integration, but basic communication skills?