Goal 4: Demonstrates critical, reflective, and metacognitive thinking.
The reflection process has served as a major component in the majority of my classes here at SIUE. Most courses required looking back on the results of careful instructional planning and discussing the “lessons learned”. Reflecting upon my own work as a student has helped me to become a better teacher. The theory of metacognition emphasizes the importance of reflection in becoming more aware of one's strengths and weaknesses. Through the reflective process I have found that I thoroughly enjoy integrating technology into the classroom. I love to see students become more motivated and excited about their school work. I enjoy seeing students, that may be shy in a traditional classroom setting, come alive while using technology tools. I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others: colleagues, family members, and peers. I know that I am not an expert, by any means, but I understand that I can always research best practices, evolve, and adapt my instructional designs to my students needs.
Early on in my teaching career, I used to think that showing an instructional or demonstration video to my students was a great way to “wrap up” a unit of study. I learned, early on in IT 500, students that are shown a video and pre-instructed to pay close attention to the video because of its educational content will recall information more successfully and come away with a deeper understanding of the material. Students also remember information better when it is presented to them visually (Kozma, 1991). I now understand that using a video is a great way to begin a unit. Allowing students to watch demonstrations of science activities on video is a great visual, especially for students that have learning disabilities. They are able to observe others complete an activity and hopefully better understand my directions for completing a similar activity in the classroom. Videos help students make connections between text and class discussions also. This seems like such a simple concept, but it has changed the way I approach science instruction.
Students today need to be engaged in the learning process. No longer are pencils, paper, and books the medium for classroom instruction. Students today are “digital natives”. They can easily become bored with a teacher centered classroom. Classroom instruction should focus on the learner and prepare students for the real world. To teach today, educators must be open-minded and willing to learn how to use new technologies. Often teachers can learn from their students. Teachers do not need to be the experts. Every member in the classroom needs to be a life-long learner.
I have become more aware of my students and how technology can help them. For example when designing my website for IT 486, I took my students’ needs into consideration throughout the design process. My purpose in creating the website was to post daily homework assignments, inform students of upcoming events, provide helpful links for homework assistance, provide information about me, and provide students a communication tool. I also wanted parents to use the website to stay informed of classroom activities. Since the website’s creation I have used it to upload documents used during instruction such as rubrics, graphic organizers, etc. The events calendar is frequently updated with classroom activities. I have a links page that provides other links to our classroom blog, wiki, hotlist, other teachers’ websites, and other helpful resources. The homework help page provides science and math resources, including links for ISAT review. I take my students into the computer lab as much as possible. We frequently add to our classroom blog, log into the wiki, or meet in the chat room. The addition of these social networking tools has helped my students becoming more technology savvy and aware of the different ways technology can be used with their school work.
Before IT 486 I had little experience with webpage design. At first my website, created in Microsoft Word and Publisher, was very simple: a header and an organized list of pages. However, further research in web design proved that mine had many flaws. According to the 10 principles of web design, websites need to be simple, informative, and contain high quality content. They need to be clear to the user, especially in forms of navigation. The user must be able to use the “back” feature. The layout and design must be consistent (Friedman, n.d.). With this research came changes to my initial design. I decided to use Macromedia Dreamweaver that had many more capabilities than Word or Publisher. I created a navigation bar and header that stayed consistent throughout each page. With the help of peer reviews I learned how to compress images, add instructional video, add images to each page, link my blog back to the webpage, and added a survey created in Survey Monkey.
IT 486: Website Development
I have learned through designing NTeQ units how important it is for students to understand their expectations before they enter into an assigned task. These expectations can be clearly organized in a rubric, written in language they can understand, and given to students before they begin working. Technical guides, rubrics, task lists, checklists, are all useful tools.
At the beginning of this program I did not fully understand how to integrate technology into my classroom or to best meet the learning needs of my students.
I have found that reflections help me improve my instruction and help students make connections between learned material and the real-world. Reflections are now used very frequently in my fourth grade classroom. After each science experiment or activity I ask students to reflect upon their work: what did they like best, what was difficult for them, what should I change if I teach this activity next year, what did they learn from this activity. I now use a classroom blog, wiki, and a chatroom to encourage reflection from my students.
Resources
Friedman, V. (n.d.). 10 principles of effective web design. Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/.
Kozma, Robert B. (1991). Learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 179-211.
