Reflection of Learning

As a final post we were asked to reflect upon what we learned in this course. Below you will see the questions and my responses to those questions.

1.What challenges did you face in this course?

I think the most challenging thing about this course was the School Evaluation Summary. I found this challenging because I was not privy to all the information that it was asking. I had to ask a lot of questions and reach out to my fellow colleagues to complete the assignment. This was time consuming and difficult to find all the information.

2. What strategies or other creative resources did you use to address these challenges?

I reached out to my colleagues and spent a lot of time researching the tools available at my school. I also spent time researching the question to make sure I understood what was being asked.

3. Which artifact do you feel was your best and why?

My best artifact was the EDTECH Graphic. I think it was my best artifact because I spent a lot of time on it and a lot of thought went into it. While creating it I really learned a lot about Education Technology and I feel like it turned out really well.

4.What is one thing you plan to do in your school or business as a result of this course?

As a result of the Edtech Trends assignment, I will be advocating to become an all Google school. This assignment really allowed me to reflect upon our current file storage system. Google Drive is far superior to what we are doing now, so I will continue to encourage and push the use of Google Drive.

Edtech Trends-Cloud Computing

This week we were instructed to spend some time reflecting on an Edtech trend found in the NMC Horizon Report 2014 K-12 Edition. 

I chose to discuss the trend of using a cloud to store data. The following is my experience with not using a cloud and my experience with using a cloud.At the school I teach at we are currently using a district server to store our documents and data. There are several ways in which we use our school server;

1. Each week teachers at my school are required to give a pretest and posttest to our students. The results are then recorded in excel spreadsheet and saved onto the district server.
2. Teachers often share documents with one another using district email. These documents are attached to an email and sent out. Teachers will keep the documents stored in their emails and search for them when they need them.
3. Typical school information (staff contact lists, master copies, handbooks…etc.) is kept on the district sever.

Below are several issues with this method of file storage;

1. If someone has a document open on their computer, it locks another person out and will not let them access the document until the first person exits.
2. With the exception of #2 we cannot access these files via the internet. We must be on campus and logged into a computer with our teacher credentials.
3. There is limited space on the server and teachers have to go in and delete files in order to make room for other files.
4. Files that are sent as attachment in emails are not safe. We recently had our email server crash and we lost all our data. This means any documents that were sent via email attachment were gone unless you saved them else where.

At the school I teach at we have access to google apps accounts. This means that we can share documents via google drive, we can collaborate in real time, multiple users can access the same document at once, we can access our files from anywhere, and our google apps account has unlimited amount of storage. This is the second year we’ve had access to district wide google apps accounts so it’s still fairly new. Most teachers still do not know how to access it let alone how to utilize it. I’ve been using my google apps account to store my teaching files, share files with parents, access youtube videos on campus, and collaborate with other colleagues in real time. For my assignment this week I chose to create a slide presentation on why my school should make the move from using our district server to using a cloud like google apps.

To view my presentation click here.

Annotated Bibliography

I was given the assignment to research an area of educational technology that interested me. I chose to research the one to one computing initiative. During my research I found a lot of articles that described the process and student impact. Overall, this assignment really helped me take an unbiased look at the strategy and decide on whether it’s worth the huge investment.

For more information about my research click here to visit my annotated bibliography in its entirety.

Code of Professional Ethics in Educational Technology

As an assignment I had to research professional ethics, provide a definition, detail a real life ethical issue, provide a resolution for the issue, and give a brief reflection of what I learned by completing the assignment. Below is an excerpt from the paper detailing what I learned through the process. You will also find a link to the assignment in its entirety.

Reflection of what I learned

“The delegation of responsibility and work expectations to an unqualified person, without proper training and resources is unethical. Through the process of researching and studying professional ethics I have been able to reflect upon my own work environment and pinpoint why it is not always effective at facilitating learning. I have also been able to think through possible solutions as to how to fix the issues. With this experience and knowledge I feel as though I can go back to the workplace and offer alternatives to improve the situation we are in.

Professional ethics provide a rubric on how we can attain success in the workplace. Overall this assignment has helped me to see the importance of professional ethics in terms of success in the workplace.”

Delegation to Unqualified Personnel by LaJean Elder