PL+Goal+2

= (Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments) =

== Personal Learning Goal: Go back through one unit from the past year that I will be using again next year and write a reflection on my use of technology in the unit as well as how technology can be better utilized within the unit. ==

This is the one goal of mine that fell by the wayside as the courses wrapped up for the summer. While I began to work on this early on I set it aside after taking some notes. I was looking at a poetry unit that I taught early this spring, where the final product required students to publish one poem apiece to the class blog of poems. Around this time we had just begun using iPads in the classroom on a daily basis. My overall experience with this unit wasn’t bad, the students learned a lot and were excited, and the final product was for some classes,[| amazing.] Yet I can’t shake the feeling that the whole thing kind of was a beautiful mess. Although there was a lot good going on in this unit, I had a hard time not just getting frustrated looking back. There were a lot of bumps in the road using the iPods, some of them completely technical, others related to the fact that I’m still figuring out how best to model and apply this technology for classroom use. Part of what I mean by “beautiful mess,” though, is that the release of control into the students’ hands can be a “mess,” perhaps because of the ipad related mishaps and distractions that are bound to occur, but more because of the way this leads students away from the traditional paradigm of teacher in control. I loved this unit for how it opened up opportunities for modeling technology to the students, but more so, for how it put the students and me in a situation where we could learn together.



Despite the fact that this goal itself wasn't met, I do feel like my work toward the first goal had a definite effect on my ability to "design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments."

Grade: C