In Week 4, our discussion was to talk about how we think technology will be changing in the next few years. According to MindShift, they believe that schools that fail to integrate technology into their curriculum and lessons will be obsolete within the next few years (Blake-Plock, 2009.) As a 21st century educator it is very hard to picture any school not integrating technology into their classrooms. In networking with other districts, I found that many of them have embraced technology, however budgetary restrictions prevent them from moving forward with newer technologies.
Upon reflecting back to the second week in the course, we spent much time discussing how important self-branding is in society. We asked ourselves questions like, “When do students start branding themselves?” or “Why is it even important to brand ourselves at such an early age?” Lea Alcantara simply describes branding as, “…an idea and perceived value formed by its intended audience…” (Alcantara, 2005.) As an elementary school teacher, it is interesting how many times we find ourselves stressing to our fifth graders how reputations (aka branding) will be when they reach middle school. We constantly tell them that how they are behaving and what type of work ethic they are developing now will affect them tomorrow.
This course was designed to help utilize the potential of multimedia on various assignments. As the Technology Specialist on my campus, this course heightened my awareness of how important it is to start using multimedia in student’s coursework. Prior to reading the article on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (Churches, 2008) it had hardly occurred to me that technology could fit in on all of the six levels of skills. As much as I’d hate to admit it, before this course, my assignments that I give to students at school would usually fall under the “Remembering” “Understanding” or “Applying” (if we had a good week) category. After learning the importance of using multimedia in assignments, I have learned how to let students participate in assignments that fall in the “Analyzing” “Evaluating” and “Creating” categories of the hierarchy.
As for implementing multimedia rich websites into the classroom, during the middle of this course, I was able to attend the TCEA conference in Austin, Texas. There, I was able to network with other education professionals on how they used various websites with their schools. Many of them simply created a Wiki or a blog to share their sites with teachers. From there, teachers were able to select the ones they liked and bookmark them on the student computer. However, what I decided to do was e-mail all my teachers one Web 2.0 website each day. In the e-mail I would enclose a full review of what that particular site did and even gave examples of how it could be used in the classroom. Since I have started doing this I have received much positive feedback from my teachers. My ultimate goal is to start a general Facebook Fan Page in which I can put all of the information I have learned into a timeline so that teachers can easily access from anywhere.
Alcantara, L. (n.d.). The Art of Self-Branding: Part One | Lealea Design. Web, Print, Graphic Design and Creative Solutions | Lealea Design. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.lealea.net/blog/comments/the-art-of-self-branding-part-one/
Blake-Plock, S. (n.d.). 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020 | MindShift . MindShift | How we will learn. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/03/21-things-that-will-be-obsolete-by-2020/
Churches, A. (n.d.). TechLearning: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally. Classroom Tech Learning, Education, PC, Mac, iPad, Bloom’s Taxonomy – Techlearning.com. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.techlearning.com/article/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988
