What I learned in this course: During EDPD 584 I learned many new things, and expanded on ideas and practices I have seen or done before. I was re-introduced to the importance of the Universal Design for Learning in creating lessons, had to download a lot of new extensions (with surprising relative ease) onto my task bar, and learned there are a lot more resources out there that I have yet to explore. Most importantly, I learned that there is likely a resource for everyone, and the importance of teaching students a variety of tools, so that they can make informed and independent choices about what works best for them.
What I learned about myself: I had thought I was relatively tech savvy before the course started… but that was definitely not the case! I work in a school that has a lot of available technology (Chromebooks, IPads, even a 3D printer!) but I was not nearly as familiar with most of the technological resources resources that are available to teachers and students! It is amazing what technology can do for students, and I’m glad I was exposed to some of it during this course. When I reflect and consider what will be most useful in my current practice, my interests lay with becoming more familiar with the tools available through Google Chrome.
What I hope to share: Working in a school that has a fairly extensive learning resources team, my goals to share involve working with my department colleagues to share what I learned about Google read&write. I think it is the most relevant piece of technology that can be widely used by our students to make learning more accessible to them. There are no students in our school who require augmentative and alternative communication, and I found that Boardmaker and Clicker7 would not be a good fit for most of our students either. I will plan to ask for 5-10 minutes of our department meetings (once a month) to share a “technology tidbit” where I can share out with my colleagues a useful tip, or new technology they can use. I will then upload information about it either on my weebly, or on our department Moodle site so they can access the information later. Hopefully I can work in conjunction with our learning resources department, and they could pass along any technology information they felt would be useful to the social studies teachers and our students in our courses.