Personal Learning Reflection

I sought out the MSU Educational Technology program because I am planning on getting back into teaching in a classroom setting next school year.  As I started thinking about this process, the one aspect of my professional life that I felt needed the most work was involvement.  In my current job, I felt like an outsider when it came to the education world at large, and addressing these feelings is at the root of most of the goals I expressed earlier in my Professional Growth Plan.  Looking back, I am confident that I made the right decision.

One of the most valuable aspects of this course has been interacting with other members of the course and the larger educational community.  I am not naturally an outgoing person, but this course required me to begin to make a presence for myself online.  The activities in the first few sessions made me get out there and make a blog, join networks, use Twitter, follow the blogs of other educators, and post my first ever profile picture online; this was just what I needed.  I feel more connected now, more a member of a community of educators, sharing ideas, encouragement, and solutions.

Collaborating with three of my classmates in coming up with a SIG presentation was also an important learning experience.  It felt good to share ideas with fellow educators and learn from their experiences.  This process also involved some genuine, necessary problem solving, as we had to work around schedules, time zones, and personalities.  It felt good to get through some initial difficulties in communication, and really pull together as a team by the end.  I learned a great deal about the capabilities of technology to foster collaboration regardless of geography.  The most important concrete lesson I will take from this experience is that voice communication is unquestionably preferable to text communication, when it is possible.

Through the independent activities, I discovered some excellent online resources that I probably never would have come across otherwise.  I found myself examining my views and opinions, and delving in to creative parts of my brain that have been underused recently. I had loads of fun creating a comic for the PLN assignment, I was impressed with the capabilities of Prezi during the SIG activities, and creating my first screencast for the Personal Technology Plan really gave me concrete experience in a technology I plan on using in my classroom.  I am excited to keep exploring and finding resources to do things I am not even thinking about yet.

Overall, I feel like I have met, or am in the process of meeting, the goals I set out in my Professional Growth Plan at the beginning of this course.  Additionally, and to my delight, I have come across new ideas that have given me new goals to work for.  I now have a more definite vision of what me teaching in a classroom could look like.  At the top of the list of these new ideas is the flipped classroom model.  Researching and learning about this innovation has given me a clear sense of how I can incorporate technology in my classroom teaching, but more importantly, it provides a bridge between the work I do now and the work I hope to be doing soon.  All of the experiences this course has provided have eased my anxiety and whetted my appetite for what is coming next.