Reflection- Preface and Chapter 1

I think it’s amazing how much our classes seem to be overlapping in regards to how education In Florida has changed to be directed toward “teaching to the test”. It makes sense to me that technology is no exception to this sad reality. However, there’s no avoiding the fact that standardized tests have a lot of power in our current school systems. Rather than resisting this though many of our textbooks, including this one, are coming up with creative ways of incorporating the skill necessary to learn the material required by the standards while at the same time maintaining influential, effective, creative and interesting instruction. I liked the example given in the preface about how to incorporate multiple standards in one lesson. The lesson they gave was obviously a very well thought out plan since it included every standard that had to be met. I hope to be able to use these types of lessons in my classroom because they seem like an effective way to teach the standards but at the same time maintain student interest and creativity.

One section of chapter 1 that I particularly liked was under the constructive (articulative/reflective) attribute. In this section Jonassen et al say that it is essential that “learners articulate what they have accomplished and reflect on their activity and observations to learn the lessons that their activity has to teach”. Earlier today I was complaining to a coworker about having to reflect on everything we do in this class. My coworker thoughtfully paused and then told me how she wished she was made to make time for reflection of each of her assignments. This really hit home for me and made me change my opinion right there and then and realize just how much I have taken reflection for granted! I think that I will have my students contribute a similar type of reflection that we are doing following the assignments I give them. Not only so I can see their reaction to the assignments but so that they can benefit from the lessons to the fullest.

I also enjoyed reading the part of the chapter about how technologies foster thinking. It helped me realize that technology use cannot be productive and meaningful if it is taught in the traditional way and that “Students should learn with technologies, not from them”. This statement made sense to me because it would be a waste of time for teachers to spend a year teaching students how to use a particular technology when a new and improved version comes out just about every year. Rather, if we teach our students how to learn technology then they will become much more self sufficient after they’re done with school and thus more likely to succeed.