Steph Does Tech

Throughout this class, I have had a few major take-aways. The first of these is just being aware of the ISTE standards. When our district went one to one, I did not pay much attention to what exactly we were hoping to accomplish with this move. To me, the addition of technology in the classroom was really to make everyone’s lives easier and more interactive. Through experience tied in with the knowledge gleaned from this class, I have become much more aware of what it is we want students to know and be able to do because of the implementation of technology. By directing my attention to the ISTE standards, I now have a reference to use when creating assignments for my students. I can use this information, tied in with curriculum, to help best inform my instruction. Another take-away I had from this course was being much more aware of copyright laws and fair use rights for education. I’ll be honest, in the past, I have not paid much attention to copyright information. I frequently put...

The second artifact I would like to reflect on involved an assignment in which we were asked to create an assignment or task students could complete by working collaboratively. This sounded easy enough to do, as students collaborate all day on work. Why this specific assignment stood out to me, is that I really had to step back and think about how do I ask students to collaborate on the same piece of work using different devices in order to help the greater good? I say working for the greater good because to me, this is really the purpose of collaboration. Two heads are better than one, right? Right! As long as those two heads are working toward the same purpose. In the past, I suppose collaboration has involved students using one computer to “collaborate” on an assignment. With the effective implementation of technology, students can now easily and equally contribute on the same piece of work. Designing collaborative work does come with its challenges. It was important to think abou...

The first assignment I chose to reflect on from this course is, not ironically, our first assignment! For this assignment, we were asked to create mock ups of student assignments that would assess student learning on each of the seven ISTE standards. I am including this assignment because I truly believe this helped me comprehend what technology integration should be used for. I’ll be honest, despite our school district being one-to-one with Chromebooks, I had not paid any attention to the ISTE standards. I had heard about them in passing, but quite frankly, could not even name one. By being asked to delve into the student standards and then think critically about how to implement these standards into the classroom, I now feel more equipped to go back to school and help students make progress toward these standards. I am including links to each of the seven assignments I created below: Standard 1: Empowered Learner Standard 2: Digital Citizen Standard 3: Knowledge Constructor ...

To me, the terms to describe technology integration into the classroom get confusing; however, when push comes to shove, they all have the same goal. Each model of technology integration aims to explain how educators implement tech into the classroom, and defines levels or clusters that describe different types of integration. Three prominent models of technology integration are SAMR, RAT, and TPACK. Prior to this week’s lesson, I was really only familiar with SAMR; this is most likely due to the fact this is what our district has taught us about. With that being said, I’ve always had a difficult time understanding the difference between augmentation and modification. To me, these two levels seem very similar, and yet one is “above the line” while the other is “below the line.” Common Sense Media explain this line as representing when an educator goes beyond enhancing learning and when they are transforming learning ( find the video here ). While I understand that perspective, I still...