EDLD+5364+Final+Assessment

Respond in the expandable boxes below. Remember to copy and paste your responses to your wiki. 1. What outcomes had you envisioned for this course? Did you achieve those outcomes? Did the actual course outcomes align with those that you envisioned? I was excited about the possibilities of this course because I use technology in the classroom already and was looking for new and better way to incorporate it into my work. I envisioned learning new software and different ways to use tolls we should know as teachers, ex- excel, PowerPoint, to better educate our kids and to help other teachers in their classrooms as well. I really think we learned some new tools with the UDL lesson builders and Book Builders. The collaboration of our team was as nice because of Google Docs, a great new tool I will use in the very near future. I think the class was well designed to help us as teachers to better underatnd ways to use technology in the classroom. I even suggested during a discussion board that my school district should make every teacher take a Foundations class from Lamar and pay for that class only. I think every teacher could benefit from classes like these. 2. To the extent that you achived the outcomes, are they still relevant to the work that you do in your school? Why or why not? For my classroom, PE, these are not as relevant. For my football team and staff Google Docs is definitely something we will use in the future. I have also used web sites with the ability to download video and publish them much as we did to TeacherTube for our project. I will however mention the UDL websites to some of my coaches and also some of our subject team leaders to see if it is somethinig that they may use. The Book Builder was great and I have a Defensive Line Coach who teaches English to kids that do not have a great command of the English language but otherwise are “smart” kids. This Book Builder would be a geat tool for him. I have also expressed to him and two other coaches how great these classes are and they are also starting in January. I believe this will help our school to become better with using technology both in the classroom and for my football team. 3. What outcomes did you not achieve? What prevented you from achieving them? I am not sure there were outcomes that I did not achieve in this course. I got to experiment with new software in the form of Book Builder. I learned a new way to organize my lesson plans using the UDL lesson builder. My group and I built a great professional development plan. We learned, well I learned, all about Google Documents. The only knock I have is the team projects. I had a great team to work with and every one did their part. But the time constraints we have as educators and family memebers makes it difficult to work in a group setting. It would be easier as full time students on campus to meet at a certain time each day to check progress, etc. but we successfully navigated through the project with the help of our friend technology. 4. Were you successful in completing the course assignments? If not, what prevented or discouraged you? My team and I were successful in completeing the project and assignments we were aksed and almost everything was completed with time to spare. I, myself, missed turning in a link to a completed assignemt that was turned in by every student in my group. I was called to interview for a Head Coaching position that week, went through two rounds of interviews totaling over 3 hours, provided a PowerPoint presentation to a hiring committee of nine people and still finished all my work and assignments, yet forgot to submit a link. I have emailed my professor two weeks ago with no response. That may be the only discouraging aspect of this entire course. Knowing you did the work but missed a link. I t happens on the football field all the time so I am not complaining. You must take advantage of your opportunites and learn from your mistakes. 5. What did you learn from this course: about yourself, your technology and leadership skills, and your attitudes? I learned that I can continually learn new things in education. I also solidified some things I already believe in, maily that kids learn in a variety of ways. That it is our job as educators, and in my case coaches, to relay our information to kids and help them learn it in any way possible. My technology skills continue to develop and with the new tools we got to use during the class I can not only strengthen my own toolbox but help develop that of my staff also. My attitude about technology has never been better. Every time I think I have seen everything there is to know we start a new class or a new week and there is something exciting to use or show our kids. The students in our class have their own web pages they use for their classroom and the exchange of ideas strengthens each of our campuses.
 * Course Reflection Prompts **