CEP 811 Final Reflection

This course has helped me to consider more carefully how and why to integrate technology into my educational practice.  What stands out most for me is the work we did with respect to Universal Design for Learning (UDL).  Thinking about educational technology as something which can help open up more learning opportunities for all students was an interesting element and some of what I encountered there seems directly applicable to second language learning.  Making sure that using technology actually adds something useful that wouldn’t be possible without it also is an important concept I took away from this course.  The practice evaluating technological resources, including my own and those developed by my classmates, using the UDL and TPACK principles helped give me skills to continue to do this when finding or creating resources for my own classes.

Coming into this course I was pretty open to anything that might help me to improve my courses.  The fact that I have now got a webpage built that I can use for my courses in the new school year alone would be satisfying.  However, I have also managed to create a WebQuest which I expect will greatly enhance a major unit and help students achieve a couple of significant goals in one of my courses.  In addition, I have developed a STAIR which will aid in my reading courses.  Through developing this resource I have also been given a couple of opportunities to present about it to other teachers.  So I would say that I have not only met but significantly exceeded my goals for this course.

Creating things that expand on and support what is possible in direct, classroom-based instruction is what I would like to be able to do more of and more skillfully in the future.  My immediate plans to this end are to continue to improve and expand on the resources I have described above and to take CEP 812.  I hope that these steps will then lead to further development I have not yet considered.

Thanks to my instructor and classmates who made it all work!