EDLD+5364+summary

 When I began EDLD 5364 Teaching with Technology, I wasn’t quite sure what the content would include. I didn’t assume that it would be “here’s how to use PowerPoint in your class” or anything so simplistic, and I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the hardware already. I wasn’t prepared for the paradigm shift that I experienced, even though I had quickly bought into the “digital immigrant/digital native” model from the class before this one, and I’d read Friedman’s **//The World is Flat//** last year, and I teach in a technology classroom (computer lab) every day, and I knew deep down that education needs a major overhaul. My paradigm shift was in forming a visualization of that overhaul, and grasping what it would take to make it happen.

The visualization that I have developed during the last five weeks is going to dramatically change how I structure my classes and how I teach. I have been slogging along, presentling stuff I thought my kids needed to know, doing things the conventional way, vaguely conscious that it was lacking something and not meeting my students’ needs. My goal is to make my classes student-centered and more project-based, with more real-world flavor. I am sure that this will better serve my students.

Everything my group did, we did through a google-doc/wiki page, and, although I appreciate all of the advantages of having a collaboration with peers in San Antonio and Houston, I still felt some distance and detachment from them. We didn't have a group web-conference, so there never was the give-and-take of face to face discussion. And I never felt completely clear about how we were to meet the expectations of the project scenario. And to paraphrase Dick Cheney, "there's things we know we don't know, and there's things we don't know we don't know. That's how I felt sometimes.

Time was my biggest challenge during this class. There was a family crisis three hundred miles away that I had to drive to and resolve, during which time my car broke down and left me stranded. The demands of my daytime job certainly didn't slow down. The course ended two days earlier than usual, which deprived me of weekend time to work on it. All these things were discouraging, but I think--I'm not sure--I think that the group delivered a pretty good product and that I made a decent contribution to it.

It has been asked what I learned from this course about myself, my technology and leadership skills, and my attitudes. In response, I have to refer you to the page entitled "Wk 5 My Vision for Public Education".