I have been a desktop publishing teacher for the past four years at Kleb Intermediate in the Klein Independent School District. So, when I saw this course as part of the curriculum for my masters I was really looking forward to the time when I would be taking this class. After reviewing each of the weeks I was anticipating on not having to work too hard in having to learn “new information”. Much of the material and assignments presented are what I teach to my students. We also study the basic elements of design, how to design a logo and creating a professional newsletter. I really did not gain any new knowledge on the actual creation of the assignments; however I did gain some fresh approaches in how I can change up some of my assignments so that they are more meaningful to my students. For example, the assignment for designing a logo, I felt the pre-planning part of the assignment was excellent for helping brainstorm ideas. I will definitely be implementing this in my curriculum for this year. I also like the fact that I could choose designing a newsletter that could be used in my personal or professional life. I had choice to create my newsletter for my class, my family, my parents/community or for professional development. I chose to create one for my extended family. Having that choice made it very meaningful for what was going on in my life at the time. This made me realize that I need to be extending this into my classroom for my students. When we work on our newsletters my students work in groups and have to produce school newsletter. I need to rethink this and possibly change what I am doing in allowing them more options. A learning experience that engages students in the study of their own community or culture creates a bond between students and families, generating a wealth of known information for students to read and write about, and to use in other content areas (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, n.d.).
What I gained about learning is that it is so important to collaborate with peers and stay current on professional readings. I enjoy reading the postings from my cohorts as I gain new insights and ideas from different perspectives. As I read through some of the postings I found myself saying “wow I never thought about it that way!” Teachers all too often stay in their own part of the world which offers them no opportunity to see how others may be tackling some of the same problems they are facing alone. The readings in Week 5 centered on using technology in meeting the needs of diverse learners. As a technology leader it is important to keep abreast of “the work of creditable scholars who synthesize a body of knowledge, summarize the evidence, and present it in an accessible format for practitioners” in order to present strategies to our teachers giving them the confidence that they are serving their students well ( Williamson & Redish, 2009). Whal & Duffield (2005) state the obvious – having a combination of students whose academic skill levels can range from several years below grade level to several years above is nothing new for a many K-12 teachers. I learned that the simplest technology tools such as word processing software has great features that support differentiation strategies. For instance, the font size can be changed or enlarged for the student who is having difficulty reading the standard text. Grammar check features can be adjusted for the level of the student. Students can use the highlighter feature to highlight the words they do not understand to later go back and work with the words. They can also highlight key words or main ideas. Text boxes can be created to add comments by the teacher or the student. A rally great feature that I did not know about is Gauging Readability. This is an option in the spelling checker. Teachers can use this to check the reading level of electronic text, as well as the level of students’ writing (Wahl & Duffield, 2005).
As a learner, I still struggle with how I will reach those teachers who refuse to embrace technology as a viable and “easy” approach to engaging today’s 21st century learners. As a teacher, I understand the statements such as “I don’t have the support or I don’t have the time to figure out how to do all this technology stuff”. I also struggle with seeing the need of effective technology leadership on the campuses. Our campus has teachers that are technology leaders for each grade level in each content area. They are regular classroom teachers that receive a stipend to go to meetings and come back to share with their team. When I speak with them they shake their head and tell me that the meetings they go to really do not help them help their teachers. I would be interested in doing some research to find campuses that are successfully implementing technology-supported instruction.
References
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. (n.d.) Meeting the needs of diverse learners. Retrieved from http://www.netc.org/earlyconnections/pub/sec3.pdf
Williamson, J., &. Redish, T. (2009). ISTE's Technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should know and be able to do. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.
Wahl, L., & Duffield, J. (2005). Using flexible technology to meet the needs of diverse learners. Retrieved from http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/kn-05-01.pdf
