Final Blog Post

I really liked that this course required us to make a GAME Plan. So often do I learn something and think “I can use that”, but I rarely take it any further and try it out in my lessons. In this course, I set two educational goals for myself: adapting or creating lessons that contain “digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008), and “contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of [my] school and community” (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008). After setting these goals, I knew I would have to update everyone on how I was doing to achieve my goals and the progress I was making which encouraged me to put them into motion. Through communicating with my fellow classmates at Walden, I was able to learn from their ideas/insight and even share some of my own with them. I began reflecting on my lesson plans each weekend for work to see how I could make improvements for the following week by using some of the technology I had been learning in my course and testing it out with my students. I realize after taking this course how important it is to update lessons, so students are learning the curriculum and technology skills collectively. Digital storytelling and blogging are versatile enough to add to many lessons, so by looking through the units I teach I was able to update the way in which students are sharing and presenting their information. I plan to continue working on my goals by keeping current on the latest technology tools for education and learning how to use them in order to teach my students.

-Lauren Cogan

Reference:

National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). (2008). http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf