Wow, what a busy, stressful time. It is apparent we need more hours in the day, and I need more hours in the night to catch up on sleep. No, daylight savings time did not get me the extra sleep I need.
I am still amazed at the professional learning going on in our discussions. Everyone has something meaningful and helpful to improve our learning.
I have been using Google Drive in my school for the last few years. It was only during this course when it was so obviously pointed out that our students have accounts to work in and collaborate as well. For the most part throughout my school students are still using email to send their work home to their home computer. The time and effort that could be saved if they just used Google Drive they wouldn't have the headache of files not converting or not converting properly.
As I reflect on the activities in the course I realize how many workshops have been attended and the content lost as time has past. I'm not just talking about PD workshops that I myself have attended and not had the time to implement into my classroom but in general. In this course I have had to leave
my comfort zone, from just the few programs I have been using for the last 10
years. As teachers we all stay current with our board practices and curriculum changes as a
necessity. However, many teachers go to workshops, on new trends within the board, but they are
never followed up on what they learned or asked if they actually implemented
what they learned in their classroom. We mentioned this several times in our
discussions and many of us believe that to succeed at implementing changes it
needs to be done during class time and facilitated in the classroom right from
the start.
What is the Chinese proverb trying to tell us... "Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand." That is how I feel about technology right now. I am involved in a course "doing" for learning purposes I am involving my students and staff. I will have learned and understood the programs I will continue to develop technology in my classroom.
I hope that the proverb stands true for all that you've learned here, and more. Perhaps when we take the extra step to share our learning with others on our staff will we truly reach the involvement/understanding stage. It's not unlike the SAMR model, isn't it?
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