Final Blog and Reflection

This class helped me understand how important it is for, and how much we need, teachers and administrators to lead others with technology. It is great to have a teacher in your school that is technology savvy and innovative in their classroom, but they are reaching a smaller population if we don’t encourage them to communicate with and model for others. As an administrator, I feel I will need to find a team of go-to leaders in technology, not just to model and do professional developments, but to also keep an open dialogue about the latest trends and to bounce ideas off of. Technology leaders are needed to stay up-to-date and they are needed to keep a dialogue going. Throughout this class we were introduced to technology solutions through various articles and applications which led to meaningful discussions.

Technology classes, in my experience, get students to try something new and to improve on something they are already doing. In this class, not only did we learn new technology, we were encouraged to share our own ideas with the class. We published our assignments for everyone in the class to read, commented on each other’s Passion Project updates, and shared our own go-to technology in a Demo Slam. We also used Twitter to tell our story and get conversations going about innovations in our field, as well as to see what others found relevant.

I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the Zoom online class. When I first heard the course was going to be online, I assumed it was going to mainly be just assignments on Blackboard. I was a little nervous and unsure how the Zoom site and interaction would hold up compared to my other classes, but I thought it was great and I would be open to taking another class in this way. I found it useful to start using Wakelet, Flipgrid, Padlet and various makerspace ideas, all of which I did not use until this class. I will likely continue to use all of these tools in my everyday work as well as encourage other teachers and administrators to use them.

Thank you!
Brian P. Conlon