Reflection: Final Blog Post

I found "Integrating Technology Across the Content Areas" to be a particularly helpful course for my professional development. I say this because it allowed me to create lessons that I can specifically use in my Science classes. I also found the GAME Plan to be an outstanding way to set goals and work toward them. Not only did we set a goal, we put it into action, monitored it, and evaluated what we had done. As with anything in education, it is still an ongoing process and I plan to continue working on my GAME Plan to improve my use of the SMART Board in my classroom. I have found many useful websites and received valuable feedback from classmates that are already proficient in their use of similar technology. Often times I find myself on an island as I learn about and implement new strategies into my classroom. This process has allowed me to collaborate with other teaching professionals that helped me to see things in a different way. It provided me with a weekly check in to see if I was meeting my goal.

The new learning that I have done as a result of my GAME Plan will be valuable to my students as I implement the strategies into my classes. Simply having access to great technology does not improve student learning. It must be used properly to be effective in the classroom. The key now is to continue using my newly gained knowledge to improve my classes instead of simply sitting on what I have learned. Fortunately I will be receiving even more training with the technology this summer and will have time to play with what I have learned. I hope to modify some of the lessons that I already teach by using the technology as well as create new lessons that would not be possible without it. These changes will help my students as I begin school again next fall. It will be especially helpful considering that the things I have learned are specific to the subject that I teach. Thank you to everyone who has helped me so far on this journey and feel free to keep the suggestions coming.