PBL, Online Collaboration, Digital Story Telling - A Reflection

The last seven weeks have been very busy, but I come away from them a much better educator. I have witnessed how technology and newer practices can be used to increase the level of learning and the interest for learning that occurs in a classroom. In developing a content area unit plan using the GAME plan process I was able to seamlessly integrate technology with another content area that was present in my classroom. The greatest learning that took place was that my students quickly realized that the internet is much more useful than they had once thought. So many of my students had only used the internet to play games or watch videos. I am not so sure that this is entirely different from what many adults use the internet for, but I will try to not digress. My students actually found it rewarding to collaborate online with their classmates through the use of a wiki. They thought that sharing their results of the PBL project by creating a group voicethread was a great experience. I learned that when you give students these opportunities you are essentially opening up the door for creativity. Each group was able to produce unique products that were representative of their group's understandings and preferences. In the future I see myself making technology more readily available. Our computer lab is going to be updated with a faster internet connection over the summer, so this should make working on these types of projects more feasible.

To help my students grow as users of technology it is necessary that it become a regular part of our classroom. I have centers that my students go through in the afternoon and every now and then one of those has been a technology center. Next year, I will be making a whole-hearted effort to have that technology center available to my students much more frequently. It will take some work on my part to have meaningful uses of technology, such as blogs, wikis, voicethreads available to my students. If I can have these available as an option at our technology center my students will become much more competent in their technological skills. The amount of enthusiasm the students had for our PBL project was very encouraging. Next year I hope to provide more PBL experiences. I feel that a good starting point would be to aim at having one PBL experience each marking period. The PBL type experiences are providing my students with real life situations that give them opportunities to make real life implications that are meaningful to themselves.

In closing, this course has reminded me how much I enjoy using technology. The greatest thing I am taking away from this course is that the gap between enjoying using technology and knowing how to incorporate it into classroom instruction is being bridged. With a conscious effort on my part, it will not be long before the teaching of technology and the other academic content areas in my classroom will go hand in hand.