Looking Back, Looking Ahead

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-long-and-winding-road-the-beatles-story-mw0001885333

As the Beatles referenced, it's been a long and winding road. This term has had its share of ups and downs for me. When District 90 announced this class, I jumped at it. I was excited to learn alongside teachers in the district using a curriculum created for D90. 

http://patch.com/illinois/oakpark/district-90-receives-certificate-excellence-financial-reporting

In terms of my expectations, this class was not what I thought it would be. There were many weeks at the beginning of the term when none of the work would connect to kindergarten or how I would disseminate information to parents or make my teaching life easier. That was the down part of the class.

As the class progressed, though, there were tech tools (the class spinner) and applications (Tagul, Web 2.0 tools- especially Blabberize and VoiceThread) that I could use with my kiddos. Along the way, I learned about trends in educational technology, many of which I had never heard of before. And while I wasn't able to use much of the trends-in-ed tech presentation material in my teaching, it did expose me to new ideas and make me a more educated professional. I am one of those nerds who love being in school and learning, so this was a super way to start our in-class sessions. All of these were definite ups of the class.

But probably the biggest "up" was my growth as a consumer and producer of technology. I never professed to being tech savvy, but I am tremendously more confident using and navigating technology than I was beforehand. This is HUGE! I never sought out ways to use technology, but am finding I enjoy being part of the Twitter education community. I find myself perusing Twitter when I have a few minutes on my hands and always leave with a new nugget of information - keeping me informed, with a cool idea for my class or exposing me to something new. I love being part of a professional learning community and live Twitter chats or reading over the discussion if I have to miss the live chat. I never understood these opportunities before and now feel comfortable navigating this space. I'm also toying with using Twitter to communicate things my class is doing with parents, which I used to feel was foolish. 

When my computer or a program is not working correctly, I don't immediately message the district help desk anymore, instead I try to problem solve the situation. While I continue to find technology a bit frustrating at times, I now know that there are often work-arounds to bypass the problem or sometimes you just need to shrug your shoulders and carry on, not understanding why some piece of technology does or does not want to cooperate (like why this blog post has such huge white borders around the images?!), but knowing that some technological 'funkiness' is inexplicable - or not worth the energy it would take to fully comprehend the root of the problem.

In the end, I am glad I took this class. While I may not be implementing a ton of technology with my students yet (which was one of my initial goals), I realize that more is not better (thank you stages of technology integration!) and prefer to expose students to only quality experiences during our precious half days together. When I do find technology that fits with my students' needs, I know that I can navigate my way through figuring out how to use it.  

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/fa/c8/af/fac8af1867258a3b67f0aa86facfc76a.jpg

Perhaps my district's plan was not to have us learn a ton of technology to implement right now, but for our technological comfort level to expand and our confidence to grow now and for the future. The Beatles sang, "The long and winding road that leads me to your door will never disappear." Technology will be a part of every teacher's repertoire and will not go away, but I now know that when technology is knocking at my door, there is no need to fear answering it.