Journal+Module+Four

Journal Module Four


 * //Reflection Prompt Module 4//** Reflect on your thinking surrounding your developing a philosophy of Instructional Technology use for learning and your understanding of 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Description: This week we were presented with the challenge of designing and developing our philosophy of Instructional Technology.

Impact: Going into this assignment I already had developed my philosophy as an educator, which is to teach and inspire students to learn and become successful students in the classroom as well as society. This philosophy looks at some interesting points. Not only do I want to convey the content knowledge in the classroom, I want to inspire the students. Inspiration is vital to student success. I have seen some of my brightest students not succeed due to lack of motivation and inspiration to succeed. From this inspiration, I want the students to succeed in the classroom as well as society.

I was given the unique challenge of developing a philosophy of instructional technology with my preexisting educational philosophy. What I came to realize was that the two could be merged seamlessly. With technology I want students to learn how to use it and to use it ethically. With this learning in place students will have a better chance to succeed in the classroom and the real world.

I also concluded that a technology facilitator needs to be able to use the technology that is available to them. So many times technologies are placed in two categories, those that are school appropriate and those that are not. Often times, the funding which is needed to pay for the school appropriate technologies is sparse and hard to find. However, students are entering schools everyday with technologies that are deemed unfit for school. These technologies need to be used. During the writing of my article I found the fact that there are over 4.6 billion cell phones in use world wide, this is probably the most widely used technology in the world and we are not using them in schools! This needs to change. Instruction needs to be designed and developed to implement cell phones, IPads, etc. into the learning environment. If students can’t all have a laptop, lets use what they do have.

Through these revelations, I ended up just changing a few words of my philosophy. My new philosophy sounds something like this: to teach and inspire students to learn and become successful students in the classroom as well as society using the available technologies to enhance and encourage this development. The goals are still the same, yet technology can help reach the goals.

Intent: Technology is becoming more and more available to schools as well as individuals at home. It needs to become a priority of places of learning to take the available technology and harness their abilities to enhance learning. So many times I feel like technology is being used, just to use technology. This practice needs to stop and the use of technology needs to be looked at through the aspect of actually helping students gain and retain content. Along with content, students need to know the dangers associated with the new technologies and how protect themselves from these dangers. As a technology leader I plan on encouraging those around me too look at the available technology and how it can be used in the classroom. I plan of trying to instill the dangers of technology and how they can be avoided. I plan of trying to help those around me look at their technology instruction and seeing if the lesson is teaching the content or if it is just a fun use of a new toy. I want to allow technology to aid in student learning and make learning more accessible to all students.