Week 5 Reflection

This class was quite a ride and I must say it is has been a battle to make it to the finish line. With this class I expected to learn more about being and Instructional Leader here on my campus however, that was not the case. The overall experience of this course is a bit mixed for me because I do not feel that I became an Instructional Leader. On the other hand, I do feel that I learned valuable information that has made me more prepared to be a Technology Leader here at my campus and any other campus that I sent foot in. Nonetheless, it is hard for me to pin point an outcome because what I thought I would be learning did not happen. Everything I learned in this course was of value and relevant to what I do as topics such as blogging, STaR charts, and podcasting were very influential and have made an impact on me. As a campus administrator, I know a great deal more than I did before and would do my best to bring in technology to my campus. I would also make sure my teachers were professionally developed in this new technology age in order to give our students the best education possible. Even though I am not an administrator yet, this course has helped me be more informed and has allowed me to achieve the mindset of a technology leader. Strangely, until this final paper I did not even know that my thinking had changed to one that is all about technology in our schools.

In looking back at this course I can say that I was successful in carrying out the course assignment but I have to be honest and say that the discussion assignments were pointless. What really was the point of having me respond to quotes from other classmates? I can understand having me read an article and write a reflective response on it or a quote, like what was required. Nevertheless, it seemed like just busy work to not only have me read 8 articles per week, but respond to quotes from each article AND respond to two from classmates on the same article. That is a total of 24 responses with 16 of those really having no point. I do not think I was the only student that thought these were very unnecessary and at times I just wanted to take a zero because I do have a life and a job outside of this. I do not feel like that was taken into consideration as those discussion assignments took many hours to do and took everything I had to complete them and the other assignments that we were given.

From this course I learned that Graduate school which at one point I thought was fun become work that was not engaging and did not keep my attention. We read so many times about how teachers should make sure students are getting something out of the assignments and in this technology age we should use technology to keep them engaged. This course used technology but I felt it was used in the wrong way and in no way tried to keep me or any student engaged but tried to keeps us busy in this “experimental course.” To change gears, in technology I learned that our school does have some technology but we could use a lot more to help our students out. From the STaR chart I learned that many teachers on campus need some more professional development so that they can become masters in what they are doing. They should be able to give their students the kind of technological education that they could succeed in as opposed to the classic, “sit and listen to lecture” model. What I learned about my leadership skills with this course is that as a leader I can ruffle some feathers and go against the norm. It is ok to speak out and if I do not agree with someone for the greater good I will do what is needed to be done but I will speak out about it and let it be known that certain things are not right. In this reflection I am being brutally honest and hopefully I will not get a backlash from this. My hope is that those that come after me will not suffer the same grueling path that I just went through.

A great resource that I learned from this course was the new innovative concept called a web blog. The value of blogs is that students will be able to learn a new technology and are able to fully express themselves in a format that was never seen before by their parents. Blogs are very helpful in that they get various people (in this case students) to agree and debate about ideals that they may currently be facing. They also allow students to reach far and wide to those that they thought they would never be able to reach such as scientists, politicians, and even movie stars to get questions answered or even discuss various issues that may be occurring. When dealing with class content this can be an excellent tool to just learn a lot more about what happened in the past but with an added “current event” feel to it. This resource can also be used by us to reach community stakeholders and let them see what are kids are learning. We want stakeholders to see what are kids are learning and how we are integrating technology into our classrooms to make our 21st century learners technologically savvy. What better way than to show them this action than by letting them reach out to our students and get prime responses in a matter of seconds?

Sadly, along with the positives that I just mentioned there are some negatives when dealing with blogs in an education setting. As I said, blogs can bring about debate but sometimes with kids debate is not always mellow. It can get very heated and intense. This is when blogs can take a turn for the worst. We have heard a lot in this class about cyber bullying and a blog can be a place for this type of situation to occur. We just must be vigilant and make sure that when we are doing this kind of online open forum in our classes, that we take steps to not have students see the negativity that comes from blogging like many other sites that have this type of application do. All in all this course did provide some helpful resources and let me see a side of education that I had never seen before. Many parts of this journey I did feel were pointless as I would have gained the same insight doing 50% of the work required as the other 50% just seemed to be extra with no basis or reasoning behind it. Technology is the future but we must remember as educators and as students that if we want to make it work for us we must use it to give our students knowledge and let them feel as if they have gained something. Not push them to the brink were they question if they still want to continue something they were excited about all along.