Week 5 Reflections

My expectations for this course ended up being a bit different than its outcomes. With the name Instructional Leadership, I expected the content to address being a leader in instruction on a campus. Instead, the course focused on technology use and some technology instruction. I think some of the things we covered were very important for leaders to learn, such as the specifics of the Texas Long-Range Plan for Technology and the Technology Applications TEKS. I also found the Week 3 work about digital natives and digital immigrants to be especially important and valuable. It’s necessary for a leader to be able to motive his/her teachers and get them to the next level as far as technology goes.

Another outcome that I found to be valuable was learning about the principal’s role on a campus as far as technology goes. Rather than a leader, the principal is a mediator, helping forge a workable relationship between the teachers and the technologists. The principal also models for the teachers what a technology user looks like by using the technology and staying current on research and trends.

I found most of the information relevant to my current position as a teacher. As a teacher, I would like to learn more about project-based instruction and technology integration. I also would like to know more about legal protections for children’s Internet use. Either I totally breezed through that lesson or it wasn’t included in this course. I don’t remember learning about that. It sounds important.

I was successful in carrying out the course assignments. The discussion board activities were cumbersome, especially when we had eight or more articles to read and post about, and then an additional 16 more to comment on. That seemed to be busy work that didn’t lend a lot to my learning (in reference to the discussion board, not the readings). I found the readings to be valuable and informative. It would be interesting if there was an effective way to have a live discussion online about the readings, rather than counting our posts and making sure the quantity is there. Students would get more out of the interaction if it were live, I think.

I did learn some interesting things about myself in this course. I learned that I’ve been sort of a technology snob, thinking I know more than I do. I probably fall somewhere between a digital immigrant and a digital native. I’m certainly not as fluent with technology as kids are today, but I’m not scared of it like some of my elders. I learned the importance of letting our students take the lead and figure the technology out for themselves in a discovery process, rather than going through the instruction booklet. I was surprised to read learn about how having fewer computers than students might be more workable than having one computer for each student. I will also remember what I learned about the principal’s role in technology-integrated schools: that he/she is there to be a mediator between the teachers and the techies and have a storehouse of current knowledge about data and trends.

As far as blogs go, I believe there is educational value in using them. In essence, blogs are a form of publication, which is the goal of most writers. It also serves as a forum for discussion, sharing, debating and learning. It’s important that the blog is password protected and that uninvited visitors are not allowed. This part of the whole thing scares me and causes me to be hesitant with using blogs in the classroom.

I do believe, however, that blogging can be a very useful tool in communicating with community stakeholders. For use off-campus and with adult participation only, those fears I listed above no longer apply. Stakeholder blogging is a great communication tool. Users can share what is happening on the campus and seek involvement from the community at the same time. The two-way street of communication gives stakeholders a sense of belonging, like they are being heard and their opinions and insights are important. This strengthens the relationship between the campus and its community.

All in all, I thought this course was a successful learning experience. A little less work would probably have been OK – and maybe a more fitting course name. Once the kinks in the online meetings/chats are ironed out, I think that aspect of the course would serve to be very valuable to our learning. Assignment and course instructions also could use more clarifying. A lot of the information was confusing and some of it contradicted what could be read in other areas of the course. Most useful to me was learning about the Texas Long-Range Technology Plan, the Technology Applications TEKS, examining the campus STaR chart and learning more about how to study data and what to do with the information.