Personal Learning Reflection

Effective Teaching

I had already taken 10 credits of educational technology at another institution before this one, but definitely still learned a lot from this class.  My biggest takeaway was the session about copyright.  A teacher recently asked me to teach her class how to make movies.  Since the student drives are so small on our network, I knew that a local storage option (like Windows Movie Maker) would not be an option, so we used Jaycut.  I confidently showed the students how to obtain free, legal images and mp3s using sites like Creative Commons Search-Jamendo and Danosongs.

Evaluating Technology

Before one can evaluate various uses for technology in education, one must gather resources.  A great way to do that was with Google Reader.  I didn't realize that I had set this up a few years ago until I was required to log in for this class.  The feed that I had coming in was CNN Education.  I am so excited about having Google Reader and using it now!  I found that a lot of sites that I visit everyday have RSS feeds.  My favorite so far is TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog).

Good Teaching

I feel like my group's SIG proposal had a lot of examples of good teaching.  The content that I personally contributed to this assignment was the research.  I am interested in research as it results to educational technology.  After all, if a technology (hardware or software application) is shown to be effective, then it should be used.  If it is not, then it should not be used.  I love the idea of trying to seek out the best practices in educational technology.  Of course, the only way to get this started is by having teachers across the country (and world) experiment with different things, and try them in different ways.  Then when a teacher seems to be on to something, we should replicate that, test it, and analyze the results.

PGP Goals

I had set two goals for myself in my PGP.  My first goal was to improve access to technology.  While this is a long-term goal, I feel like I have already made some progress.  I was able to convince the right people in my district that we needed to get Google Chrome in the computer labs.  Internet Explorer 5 just wasn't cutting it anymore.  It was no longer loading flash and a few other things.  They told me that downloading recent versions of Explorer, as well as flash updates (and others) was too time consuming on the older computers (most are between 7 and 11 years old!!).  Firefox's system requirements were too high for our aging machines.  I had been using Chrome for a few years, remembered that it had very low system requirements, and updated Flash player automatically.  It seems like a win-win.  I was able to convince the Google-skeptics that this really was the best solution for us right now.  We essentially made 2 unusable labs usable again :)  Therefore, I'd say Goal 1 is in progress, but going well so far.

My second goal was to improve my Prezi skills.  I forced myself to do this by offering a Prezi professional development.

New Goals
My long-term goals haven't really changed since the beginning of this class.  I plan to get accepted into and (hopefully) graduate from MSU's MAET program by August 2012.  Then I think I'll take a year or two off and slowly work on my PhD.  I don't have any kids yet, and know that my priorities may change once I do.  Either way, I'm a lifelong learner of educational technology.