EDTECH Research

My reflection of this assignment is again of amazement.  I absolutely believe in best practices and making sure those are based upon updated research.  In my own classroom, I had specific goals that I wanted to do next year in the area of reading.  This assignment made me put them into objectives and will enable my principal to evaluate how I am doing in this area.  I would love to be evaluated on something that I want to show growth in and to be able to showcase the technology used to meet that objective.

I found myself not being able to stop reading these articles or papers, especially since they were so current.  Once I read Julie Coiro's article about "new literacies", I had to continue reading another one just to understand more.  Understanding that all children that are proficient readers aren't necessarily proficent online readers.  Knowing that all testing will be going online for evaluation of students and of teachers, these "new literacies" need to be in our basic instruction of reading comprehension.  

Doing this research, made me realize how important it is to evaluate our tools that we use, find the current research on it and move forward accordingly.  Sometimes in education, we will stay on a path that is "comfortable".  In this movement of technology, this is not a time to be comfortable.  It is a time of growth and learning for students and teachers.  

I know that many reading this are already the innovators in their classrooms and schools because of the nature of this program we are in.  However, it is our responsiblity to help others in our quest.  

EDTECH Research on improving reading through technology and blended learning for the individual student

RSS in Education

After this assignment, I feel very satisfied.  One, I really needed an easier way to compile all of my notifications with all my little 2nd grade bloggers.  Two, I have wanted to try out Camtasia since December, when I learned the great benefits from others.  I just could never find the time. Three, I have known Google Reader was phasing out and knew I had to transfer everything to Feedly and now I got all that stuff done.  The only thing left is for me to categorize all that I transferred and I am going to do that tonight!

I knew what needed to be done, but didn't have the time to learn or just didn't have the time to complete it.  This assignment helped me bring my To Do list a little bit closer to completion.  Hopefully next week's assignment can help me tackle more!

Please note that I could have recorded my voice 5 or 10 times over, but I didn't.  I wanted to have a good first authentic model to show people how far I've grown as we go through this program. :)  Please excuse my dog as she thought I wasn't at all busy.

RSS in Education Screencast

Elements of Educational Technology

Rebecca L. Muller
June 14, 2013
EDU 501

Elements of Educational Technology

After reading all of the elements, of which I found all to be very important, it was very hard to pick just one to write about.  Then I narrowed it down by the one that I am most passionate about and that was learning.  I think that if learning wasn't present for all the elements, they wouldn't be effective for anyone.  

My feelings about learning comes from layers and layers of experience, testing of theories and my own beliefs built over time.  Some things don't change, and some things do.  This definition for me hasn't changed from surface to deeper, I have always known it was the deeper that I had to bring my students to.  Working with technology hasn't changed my definition, but sometimes we are caught up in the surface of how great things work and look and forget to be focused on the how.  How can they show me what they learned?

Welcome

Just a little information about me:
Colorado Native
Educator 25 years
Married
Three teenage boys
Passionate about Technology and Teaching
Google Certified Teacher
Applied to become Google Certified Trainer
Love learning and teaching best practices