Week 5 Assignment: Course Reflections

Completing the Pre-Course Self Evaluation should have been an indication that I would have a lot to learn in this class. My Pre-Course Survey score was low and revealed that I had no background knowledge of The Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology and the shared vision of academic excellence and goals for educational technology through the year 2020. Before beginning this class, I was unaware that this Instructional Leadership class would focus on technology nor could I have imagined how helpful this focus would be in my preparation to become an administrator.

I considered myself technically-able; however this course taught me how to effectively use a blog, web conference, and Power Point to communicate with my colleagues and professor. I very much appreciated the opportunity to “meet” with Dr. Abernathy via web conference which gave a more personal feeling to my on-line program at Lamar. Dr. Abernathy is the only person I have “met” at Lamar and she was so encouraging and welcoming of developing a relationship with her students that I did contact her when I had a problem with a grade. Participating in the blog and web conference also helped me see how I could incorporate technology such as web conferencing and blogging in my role as a principal.

My experience with blogging prior to this course had been reading the blogs of people who appeared to be self absorbed and egocentric. In using a blog as an administrator to discuss issues on my campus, I plan to use a campus blog as an exchange of information among the stakeholders of my campus and not a place to pontificate or post only my views. Because I was not aware that this course would focus on technology, I had not envisioned a specific outcome for myself, but I am now more prepared to include technology in my vision as an administrator.

While the amount of reading and responding to the readings in this course was substantial, I feel that I now have a library of information that I can refer to as I explain to teachers why it is critical that we integrate technology into the classroom in order to prepare our students for the global economy of the 21st Century. I would like to have had more timely and current articles to read, but I will refer to the articles from this course in the future. I am now able to incorporate teaching, learning and technology and I understand the need to differentiate instruction using technology to meet the individual needs of all of my students. I think we may have been able to successfully display an understanding of the weekly readings by responding to one student on the discussion board each week. Submitting 24 postings on the discussion board each week seemed redundant and did not significantly increase the collaboration of students.

This course underscored that my campus is not data driven. Becoming a more data drive campus is goal that I have for my school. The STaR Chart Summary for my campus, Greentree Elementary suggests that the school needs to increase professional development for on-line learning and provide more access to professional development, yet there are essentially no technology-related goals for improvement in our Campus Improvement Plan. I am very excited to present my Power Point presentation called Seeing STaRs at Greentree that I created in this course. The teachers on my campus are unaware of why we complete the STaR Chart Survey, the importance of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology and how it relates to both the district and campus improvement plans. I now feel educated in sharing the long range plan for technology and have become an advocate for incorporating technology into each classroom.

I am excited to pilot a program that I created in this class. The program will allow my school to capitalize on the “digital natives” we are now hiring as new teachers who have grown up in the light of technology. In a reverse mentor situation, new teachers will be able to reciprocate learning as they teach their mentor veteran teachers new technical skills. Having novice teachers mentor the veteran teachers will tap into on-site experts at no additional cost, and will empower the beginning teacher and build his or her self esteem.

After completing Instructional Leadership: The Technology Link, I feel that I am well prepared to teach others about the Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology, The Texas Teacher STaR Chart, the Technology Applications TEKS, and how to model technology use and the integration of technology throughout the curriculum. I have become aware of cyber bullying and the need to explicitly teach young students about cyber ethics. Reading the extensive articles regarding technology use in education helped provide me with a solid background knowledge of the differences between “digital immigrants” such as myself, and the “digital natives” who I am instructing. I learned about the importance of updating my school’s Acceptable Use Policies and the need to negotiate, facilitate, and debate technical issues with my teachers and technical staff.