Final Reflections on Technology

My final reflection on this course will be the same thought I had whenever I opened my computer and scrolled through my bookmarks to find this site.  The homepage was auto-labeled “School Technology – Hard Fun” in the list.  I am assuming that you, Dr. Richardson, knew this and labeled it as a bit of a subtle, inside joke.

Over the course of the semester, I did come to realize that technology can be described as “hard fun.”  It was, and is, hard work to stay current with technology in our classrooms.  That “hard fun” does not only apply to keeping up with technology – it also applies to the work that teachers must put in to find creative and content relevant ways to incorporate that technology into our lesson planning.  Unfortunately, many teachers seem to build a lesson plan and then just keep using that same lesson year after year.  Trying new technologies, websites, and games requires us to find time to build new lesson plans and time is a teacher’s most limited resource, along with money.

I knew many of the topics covered in this course, but I also learned about many more.  I was impressed and a bit intimidated about how many different topics we covered in the course.  As some of my other classmates previously stated, I appreciated that our technology course used the Zoom video-conferencing to facilitate class.  Coding no longer seems like an entirely foreign language to me.  I certainly grew more comfortable with putting myself in front of my laptop’s camera and creating Flipgrids.  Those will be showing up in my classroom in the next marking period or two.  I also really appreciated that this course emphasized doing technology and not simply just discussing it.  It is rare in education classes, workshops, and professional development trainings that the teacher role models the learning that should be going on.

Additionally, this course was about technology, but it provided me with many lessons and reflections on our reason’s for being enrolled here in the first place – our interest in future leadership positions.  As a potential future leader in a school, I have a responsibility to be current with technology and comfortable with teaching its application in education.  This course gave me the confidence to teach our faculty Nearpod on a professional development day – a nice juxtaposition of both technology and leadership.  Technology is certainly one avenue in which I, or any other educator, can demonstrate leadership.

I wish you the best in your recovery and thank you for all of your time and effort.

Sincerely,

Bobby Knaupp