21st Century Teaching & Learning Self-Assessment

For the past few years my ideas about education and teaching has shifted more and more towards student engagement and my role as a teacher transitioned from the instructor of knowledge to the facilitator of learning.  This year, as my role of an educator has transitioned from a teacher of students to a technology coach for other teachers, my perspective on the role of a 21st century educator has changed even more.  Due to the fact that the needs of students are constantly changing, and the world which our students need to be prepared for is changing as well, I have seen the value of educators as lifelong learners.  Students need to be prepared for the world they will encounter and in order for their teachers to prepare them, the must stay relevant with the changing world by continuing to learn and explore the world around them.  One thing that we must be able to prepare our students for is communication with others around the world, so it is extremely important that we model the skills of communication, collaboration and connections with others.  

Early on in my career as a teacher, I noticed that education was always changing and I realized that in order to meet the needs of my students I would need to be aware of how it was changing and what was considered “best practice.”  Through this realization, I developed the mindset that I would need to be continually learning, so I put myself into situations where I could continue to grow as an educator.  While I was teaching science I became engaged in multiple learning programs through workshops, museum programs, professional development sessions, and master's programs to deepen my understanding of best practices with scientific inquiry in education.  Soon after, new science standards were released and I started attending workshops, following blogs, and digging deeper into the national science standards to understand best practices in science education.  As more and more technology became available in my district the focus of my own readings and professional development started shifting to ways I could use technology to increase student engagement and improve my instruction.  I started following ed-tech blogs, joining google plus communities, researching new tech tools, attending tech training offered in my district.  As I researched more about integrating technology into the classroom, my passion for using technology to reach the students continued to increase as well.  I have continued to broaden my professional learning network (PLN) as I have joined different communities and attended additional professional development sessions to continue to learn ways to improve instruction and student learning.

Despite all of the learning I have engaged in, and the fact that I have realized the value of collaboration, communication, and connections, I feel that I am still struggling to be a collaborator and communicator to individuals outside of my school district.  In my position as a technology coach this year, I have worked to communicate what I have learned with the teachers I am in contact with, however my communication generally stops there.  I know that the last part of developing a PLN is that I have to share what I have learned with others, however I haven’t been an active participant in sharing my ideas or new information with others.  I have been content to be the life-long learner, and I haven’t taken on the responsibility of sharing what I have learned with others, outside of the teachers that I work with in my district.  As I continue to learn about best practice in education and technology integration, I plan to start sharing some of the ideas and resources within my network so I can continue to deepen my connections and make an impact on others.  If we expect our students to communicate and collaborate with others to become creators of content then we need to model that behavior to them.  If I expect the teachers I work with to model that behavior to their students, then I should be modeling that behavior to them.

Reflection on Digital & Media Literacy

This course opened up my eyes to how important it is to make sure we are creating literate individuals and how literacy is always changing.  I have always been aware of how technology is an ever changing entity, however before this class, I never really thought about what that means for the skills students need to learn in order to be literate and how big of a role media and digital sources play in determining how literate an individual is.  This will impact my role in education because it gave me a whole new lens to look through as I am working with teachers to design lessons to best meet the needs of our students.  

Students not only need to know now to read a text and make sense of it, but they need to learn how to interpret a variety of media sources.  Students not only need to learn how to write for a desired audience and purpose, but they need to learn how to create, produce, and publish their work.  Since there is so much that goes into becoming literate individuals, there needs to be just as much that goes into the teaching to prepare students for these situations.  As I continue to work with teachers, I am going to focus on giving them more ways to integrate these different ideas, sources, and types of products that students can create.  Students need to be exposed to, and become proficient with, a variety of different tools and resources throughout their education.  

Something that I still need to work on is providing teachers with meaningful examples of technology use that is truly integrated with the curriculum and not just an add-on to their lesson.  I know that the best way to reach students is to provide them with relevant and meaningful experiences.  The great part about using technology is that it often opens up the door to the outside world and increases the ability for students to connect with the lesson.  The problem is that I often see, or even think of myself, ways to integrate technology that will enhance the lessons but they still are things that are pretty similar to what they have been doing in the past.  My area of focus needs to be how to help the teachers create authentic uses of the technology where it fits into the lesson or project seamlessly because the use of technology is essential for allowing the students do something that they couldn't do without the technology.  Since the technology opens up the doors to new situations and new applications, I want to ensure that what I am helping the teachers with is really using technology most effectively. 

One of my goals as the Technology Instruction Coordinator this year is to work with teachers to develop more digital writing pieces in our curriculum.  I am planning on working with the teachers to use a few of the story writing apps and sites that I learned about from the "Cool Tools" assignment in the Digital & Media Literacy course.  We are planning on developing digital writing guidelines to go with the units that the teachers are currently teaching.  This would give the teachers guidance for how they could give the students opportunities to not only produce a quality piece of writing, but to create it in a digital way that can then be published and shared with others.  Some of the programs that I want to use within these writing units are My Storybook, Storyjumper, and Storybird.  I think that all of these tools would be appropriate and motivating for the students to use to produce their stories digitally.  They would engage the students in the publishing process and publishing the work would make it a more meaningful experience for the students because they are writing for more than an audience of one.