![]() C1.Q2. Lifelong learning is not just a teacher preference; it is also a requirement for maintaining state certification. Technology literacy courses and workshops are some of the most popular learning experiences for certificate extension and renewal. Do you believe that taking additional courses in technology literacy is an important as those for your content or discipline? Is too much emphasis being placed on developing and maintaining technology competency? Defend your view. The world our students live in, and will eventually work in, has become a technology filled world. Therefore, it is imperative that we alter our teaching styles to reflect the world around us. I teach junior and seniors at the university level, so not only are the students needing to be prepared to work in this technology filled world, they are coming to us expecting to be taught in a technology filled classroom or not in a classroom at all. My department, Medical Laboratory Science (MLS), has put many of our courses online. Although our field is extremely technology dependent, one only needs to walk into a medical laboratory at a hospital to see just how technology dependent, it is a different type of technology than what the book is referring to. As educators in this field, I think we tend to want to use our continuing education credits to learn about the newest and greatest technology in the laboratory. We are excited about our field and would like to bring what we have learned back to our classroom – which is a good thing! However, because we are educators, I think we could, and should, dedicate some of those continuing education credits to keeping ourselves abreast on the newest and greatest technology in the classroom as well. I do not think that we require enough continuing education in technology literacy at a university level. It has been my experience that we require more of our students than we do of our faculty. C2.Q3. You have learned about a variety of technologies useful to support learning in this chapter. With which one of these are you most comfortable? Which are most useful in helping to prepare 21st century learners? Describe the technology and its potential applications in the grade level or content area you wish to teach and demonstrate why it is most appealing to you. When trying to integrate technology in my classroom, I have been overwhelmed by the plethora of tools available to educators. Many of the tools seem exciting and attention grabbing, however I am left questioning their actual usefulness. I try to guard myself from adding technology to my classroom for the sake of adding technology. I appreciate this chapter’s attempt to identify which tools could be useful in achieving certain goals in the classroom. Of the tools listed in this chapter, I have not used any of them, however Blackboard does accomplish the tasks that many of the tools are designed to perform. I am looking forward to exploring A.D.A.M., OnLine Labs, and the Inspiration software. These could all be used to reinforce the material I present in the lecture portion of my courses. As the chapter states, the students are entering the Information Age workforce. They will need to be equipped with a different skill set than previous generations. I can see where many of the collaboration and creativity fostering tools can be used to enhance the students’ skills in these areas. I incorporate a group project in each of the face-to-face courses I teach because, as stated above, collaboration and team working skills are essential for this generation. However, I have not found a way to incorporate group projects into my online courses. When taking a closer look at Elluminate, a collaboration tool, I discovered that it had been acquired by Blackboard and incorporated into Blackboard Collaborate. So, I probably do have these tools available to me, I just have to find ways to incorporate them into my online classes. C3.Q1. Instructional planning is a skill every educator at every grade level must master. To integrate technology into instruction, a logical, sequential approach is needed to help teachers to clarify which technologies are most useful and at what points they should be included in the process. Discuss Design-Plan-Act (DPA) system – what it is, how the three distinct planning components of DFA differ, and why it is helpful to use a system approach to integrate technology? The Design-Plan-Act! system is an example of a systematic approach to instructional planning. It concentrates instructional design down to three processes. The first of these is to look at the big picture, or to design the overall content and sequence of the instructional unit. The second process is to plan the daily activities that will need to occur in order to achieve the goals set forth in the design phase. The planning process will include identifying which learning and teaching strategies that will be used, and what assessment tools will be used. The last process in implementing the plan, or act. In this phase, the educator is to determine how the learning activities, identified in the plan phase, are going to flow smoothly. As I have stated in one of my reflections above, I try to guard against using technology in the classroom for the sake of using technology. By using a systematic approach to design instruction, I can plan the instruction first, then decide if there is a technological tool available that might help me deliver the instruction or help the students understand the content presented. I have done the opposite. I asked my students to create a fifteen minute video to summarize a project they had worked on. The actual project content was great, however, it soon became clear that the students were spending too much time on the video instead of on the content of the project. I have since eliminated the video portion of the project.
4 Comments
Demetric Williams
6/12/2016 06:17:49 am
Hi Mary:
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Mary Warden
6/12/2016 04:24:43 pm
Thank you , Demetric! I also, think it is a great when my students introduce me to new technology. My students have introduced me to several new collaboration tools over the past few semesters!
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6/12/2016 02:59:45 pm
In regards to question 1, I agree with your statement about us needing more continuing education credits in educational technology. I think attending meetings such as the Clinical Laboratory Educators Conference (CLEC) and USM's Educators Connect are avenues for obtaining educational technology CE's. I wish you could obtain MLS education certification, and in doing so gear continuing education credits towards MLS education; however, I believe the CE's in basic laboratory topics is still essential. As educators we need to stay up to date on current laboratory technology and practices. You mention A.D.A.M and online labs in your second question answer. I think those would be more useful for our online classes than the face-to-face classes. The face-to-face classes have a laboratory component. The fore mentioned technologies would be very useful to supplement the online classes which have no lab. In the final reflection you mentioned deciding on the technology first. I have decided to use technologies and tools in the past that didn't work. I think the important thing is that we were willing to try new things, and then revise if need be. The revision process of course design is a very important step. If the students aren't learning then we aren't doing our job.
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Mary Warden
6/12/2016 04:07:55 pm
I agree that our CEU's in our field are still very important! When I was writing that response, I had forgotten about CLEC. I do need to make more of an effort to attend one of those!
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AuthorI'm Mary Warden, a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi. I am currently working on my PhD in Instructional Technology and Design. Please read my self introduction to learn a little more about me! BlogrollXavier Agee
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