EDTC 6431 Learning with Technology: Course Reflection

EDTC 6431 Learning with Technology course has been extremely beneficial in illustrating the 21st century skills students need for future academic and workplace success. A provided article by Huggins, Ritzhaupt, and Dawson related that the importance of teaching 21st century skills is the “ability [of students] to use technologies to support problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and decision-making” and it is the teacher's job to “support lifelong learning and for providing authentic learning opportunities that prepare students to succeed in a globally competitive workforce”(2014). Throughout this course we explored just what providing such experiences and learning opportunities entailed by focusing on each ISTE standard.  

These standards directly relate to the idea of planning and integrating technology with pedagogical methods to enhance student engagement and therefore student learning. I would say that technological awareness is the area in which I have grown most professionally. In creating my own personal trigger questions and subsequently searching for answers to that question, I have been exposed to the many ways technology can function as a learning tool. From flipped classrooms where students work more independently through the use of technology and the teacher acting as a facilitator to projects that can span the globe and have students of differing cultures collaborating to solve a problem, technology as a tool is powerful.

A fun project I embarked upon, as a result of my exposure to the many new tools in this course, was a presentation for another course EDU 6136. The course assignment was to create a handout, presentation, or video aimed at familiarizing new teachers with a learning topic from the course. I did not want to create the same old boring handout or video, so the presentation idea caught my eye and it made me think of the digital storytelling platforms I had read about in the assigned article, The power of digital story (2014). So, I created my presentation using Powtoon, a platform I had heard of through this course. It was a great exploration of the tool and I have since shared Powtoon with several co-workers.  This was a real example of how I could use this in my own classroom and because I have used it, I will be more comfortable incorporating it into my curriculum.

The world has become digitally based and as such students need to learn, practice, and engage in this way. Learning to become good digital citizens and collaborators is at the heart of 21st century student skills. Overall, the benefit of this course has been that I now see technology as a tool, and because I am now more aware of the vast array of digital platform out there I am more likely to go in search of one to incorporate into a unit to create heightened student engagement, collaboration, and creativity.

References

Dillion, B. (2014). The power of digital story. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-power-of-digital-story-bob-dillon

Huggins, A.C., Ritzhaupt, A.D., & Dawson, K. (2014). Measuring information and communication technology literacy using a performance assessment: Validation of the Student Tool for Technology Literacy (ST2L). Computers & Education, 77(C), 1-12.