Danielle Clark's Updated Goal List

I formed five main goals for this course at the beginning of the semester. Looking back on them, there’s really only one that I haven’t spent time learning more about. Unfortunately, that one was probably the one I considered most important! My five goals were to learn more about….

1. And become more comfortable with the technology I admittedly dislike.

As I said in my opening blog post way back in January, I can usually figure out what I need to do in order to get technology to bend to my will and do my bidding. At the very least, I knew the power of Google, eHow, and the expert knowledge stored within.

What I wanted to know, or what I felt that I really needed someone to hang a grade over my head and force me to discover, were things like wikis and podcasts. I wound up learning about those along with Delicious, WebQuests and the proper use of images from online. I still don’t like them all (I’m looking at you Delicious), but I know how to use each and every one of them to the point that I can explain it to someone else, which was part of my goal. Wikis, for example, drive me nuts while I’m midway through the work. I’d rather clean the toilet than work on a wiki, but looking back on the class wiki, I can see the fantastic potential of it as a teaching tool and assignment. I’m very excited to use it in my classroom one day. Ideally, I’d like to use it in the way I mentioned in the tech integration contest- as a long term project that students can add and edit as they learn more and more on a subject over the span of a few grades. It’s a big project, but I think it’d be completely worth it.

2. The available technologies to help Autistic and other special needs children get as much as they can from their lessons.

I really only conquered this particular goal this past week with the work that I have yet to really submit. Fail. Anyway. Through my work with a handful of special needs students in both field observation and my work as a Nanny, I already knew of a good number of tools used to help these students excel. At least, I thought it was a good number of items, but this weeks Iris Module helped me see just how broad the term assistive technology is and how many tools can fall under that particular category.

Cognitively, I definitely compiled a list of AT devices to remember in the future, but I think more than anything I was reminded of just how altering these tools can be for students. Another big thing was the suggestion of classes to teach parents how to use the devices. It seems like such a no-brainer to clue the parents in, but I hadn’t thought of it at all.

3. Hands-on technology methods to help students learn how to problem solve for real-life situations.

This goal was my main reason for choosing Educational Games for the class wiki project. Truth is, I’ve always been interested in the simulation side of educational games, but that easily phased into the serious games we covered in our wiki. I knew going into this project that these games are a great way to tackle the material that is a little too abstract for students to understand. In my original blog post, I gave the example of seasons on Earth. There are so many variables for students to take into consideration when they learn about this subject that it’s easy to get lost in all the different information. So that was really my main reason I wanted to learn more about this form of technology. I knew some great games existed, but I didn’t really know what they were, how I could implement them successfully, or what content areas I would be able to cover.

Because this was my wiki project with Buck, this is probably the area I learned the most. And although I could type out everything I learned, that’s what the wiki is for! I think implementing the games will be a challenge based on where I wind up teaching and the resources available to my students. If we are only allowed an hour in the school computer lab and we only have one computer in the classroom, it’s going to be difficult to implement this goal. Having learned about its vast benefits though, it’s something I’m very willing to introduce to my students somehow, someway. I’d most like to use serious games, which span several subjects, so I can’t narrow it down too specifically. I think they’re a great way to get hands-on, in-depth knowledge in a way that fosters individual critical thinking while still opening opportunities for whole-class discussion.

4. Resources to help school upgrade and include new forms of technology in the classroom.

This is the goal I didn’t really work on! Shame. Just reading the goal itself, I feel like I have worked on it throughout every step of the class, but reading the more in-depth description on my blog involves finding grants and monetary sources to bring in devices like SmartBoards, updated computers in the classroom, subscriptions to online resources and so on.

Of course, I did learn about a good number of free online resources that would be fantastic aids in the classroom, but this goal was really more about finding a way to fund the things I can’t find a free alternative for. Like the SmartBoard. There’s still time I guess.

5. Establish a bookmark tab full of useful Education links that I can use myself later in other classes and my career, as well as a resource for parents.

I worked on this goal as a separate blog post, which ended up coming in quite handy a number of times throughout the course! Going into this goal I knew that there’s an endless amount of resources available online, I just didn’t really know what any of them were. I found a great stock of resources over length of the course though and they will be great for helping me to stay organized and introducing material safely in the classroom, among other things. Mainly though, I tried to find resources that would be useful for parent, students and group projects.