Reflections

The course that I have just completed has challenged me to step out of my comfort zone. I've learned to use new technologies, never created a blog before, and have given serious thought on how to implement them in my classroom. Collaborating with my classmates on the wiki assignment gave me ideas on how I can collaborate with my colleagues, students, and parents of students with the use of wiki pages.
The learning process that I have experienced through taking online classes has been challenging at times. I have never experienced such student centered learning. My entire educational experience has been very teacher centered; listening to lectures, taking notes, reading and regurgitating information. Whereas these courses, provide information that then has to be applied to hands on experiences. As I mentioned, this can be a bit of a challenge. But the challenge is very rewarding with the end product.
Due to this, I have changed my perspective on being a teacher-centered educator. In the past I have been guilty of teaching through whole group instruction. I'm not opposed to this, but recognize that I need to utilize group and individual exploration activities more.
Therefore, I will be setting these two long-term goals to achieve over the next two years. First of all, I plan to utilize more technological resources; such as blogging with parents and students on my classroom website and setting up wiki pages for research projects. This particular goal doesn't pose many obstacles with the resources my school district has already provided. In order to accomplish this goal, I will only need to set up the pages/accounts needed and cut out time to keep them updated. My second goal is to create a more student centered, hands on, learning environment. Rather than having students complete worksheets during independent learning time, I will create projects for them to work on and experiments for them to complete. In order to achieve this goal I will have to set aside time to plan these new activities and collaborate with other teachers that have similar classroom environments. I feel that both goals are attainable and that over a two year period I will be able to transform and improve my teaching skills.