Final Reflection of My 3rd Walden Course, week 8

I have completed a course at Walden University, called "Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society. I have had the opportunity to develop my own technology skills by being a student who used technology in real life applications. The process of using the hands on technology, blog, wiki, podcast has helped me understand the personal connections which can take place with technology, the frustration, required patience and ultimately deeper learning which comes through struggling with a learning topic while using technology as a medium when it does not always work out according to plan.

My attitude to student driven learning has not changed because of this course. I have always sought out opportunities for my students to take over their on intrinsically motivated learning, but technology does provide another medium which the students enjoy learning with. According to McHale (2005), students learn differntly. To further my own knowledge of this medium so I can continue to offer it to my students, I need to be assertive in offering the choice of using technology in the classroom. This means I need to be more comfortable offering choices to my students in which I am not a knowledge master in. In the future I need to be more comfortable using technology I have not mastered. According to Prensky (2005), "Our students, as digital natives, will continue to evolve and change so rapidly that we won't be able to keep up. this phenomenon renders traditional catch-up methods, such as in-service training essentially useless." To keep up to the digital natives quickened learning pace, I will need to be more comfortable giving up my perceived control of the learning process to the students. I will continue to grow as a facilitator in their learning. To help with this outcome I plan on completing my masters program in integrating technology in the classroom. I hope this will provide further understanding of my students and the learning process they go through on a daily basis. I will also work on petitioning my administration to adopt a laptop policy for our middle school. Within my grade team, I will focus on incorporating a group wiki for our 4 classes to host collaborative work on.

Upon reflection of a self assessment check list I completed at the start of this course I have grown somewhat in my thinking. This course has helped me realize that learning is not a constant but is continually evolving.

References
McHale, T. (2005). Portrait of a digital native. Technology & Learning.
Prensky, M. (2005). Listen to the natives. Educational Leadership, 63(4), 8–13.