A Reflection on EdTech541

I feel that at the end of any long journey it is important to reflect on where you have been, how far you have come and where you are going; this final blog post is my reflection on my EdTech 541 journey. Over the course of the past 14 weeks I have learned many things, some directly related to educational technology, and some related to the lives of my colleagues. In relation to educational technology I have been exposed to a wealth of free resources on the internet through course readings and through the posts of my peers. Some of these tools will be valuable moving forward. However, I think one of the most valuable tools that I learned this semester was not internet related at all but rather the presentation of relative advantage and the Technology Integration Planning (TIP) Model. I think that these two tools will provide me with a different way to present technology integration suggestions that may serve me well in some professional situations. I also learned a great deal from my peers and colleagues in this class. From the discussion that has occurred in this class it appears that most of my colleagues are teachers or students focusing on the K-12 system (not all, but many) whereas I am an Instructional Technologist in Higher Education. I learned a great deal regarding the different concerns impacting educational technology integration at the K-12 level and feel that I now have a better understanding of those challenges.

I feel that many of the things I have learned in this class will enable me to grow in my professional life and help me to better serve the individuals I work with. With several new resources at my disposal, such as new technology tools and the TIP model, I feel that I am well equipped to aid instructors with their teaching and learning challenges.

This course was my last course in the MS program and, while I cannot say that this course has had a large impact on my thoughts regarding teaching, it has reinforced already existing ideas such as:

• Technology must always be integrated with a purpose, never for the sake of technology
• While there are many tools available some of them off affordences and advantages that make them better equipped for certain jobs
• There is often more than one right answer to a teaching and learning challenge and often the best answer is context sensitive taking into consideration the challenge as well as the individual needs of the learners and instructors

I used these ideas along with theories and practices learned in other courses to develop the assignments for this course. Assignment development was perhaps the biggest challenge in this course for me as I do not teach and learning units are not often used in this way at the higher education level. I not only had to develop a sound technology integration model based on the principals presented by Roblyer, I also had to develop all of the content from scratch at a grade level that I am unfamiliar with. This was a large challenge. However, I found that the application of basic instructional design methodologies such as the Dick and Carey Model (2004) to be very helpful in overcoming this challenge. Once the learning activities were partially developed it was very easy to integrate the technologies using Roblyer 's thoughts and supporting theories such as Andrew Churches' Bloom's Digital Taxonomy (http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy)

References:

Dick, W., and Carey, L. (2004). The Systematic Design of Instruction (6th Edition). Allyn & Bacon.

Roblyer, M. D. (2006). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (4th Edition). Prentice Hall.