Sara's Goals

 My first goal was how to utilize educational technology to better develop, and design curriculum geared towards college and career readiness with high school grades 9-12 to promote a college going culture in underserved, underrepresented communities. It was also to improve content in my higher education classes I teach. I feel I have been able to meet this goal. I already have one assignment mostly created for students in my First Year Seminar (FYS) class at the community college. I will need to edit and change some content before allowing it to go live in FYS: create a rubric for learning assessment so the students understand the guidelines to the assignment, edit some content to make the assignment a bit more robust, and add some images or graphics that are meaningful to the content. 

 

I am now working on completing the QR Code Scavenger Hunt for the Success and Failure activity. I will continue to work at developing that over the holiday break to use in with both high school seniors, and with students in my First Year Seminar class in January or February. I have some reading to do to add to the content I already have, but I have Denzel Washington’s commencement speech already, some videos and articles on success and failure. I need to create the QR codes for weblinks that will take students information about each person so students can read. At the end of the assignment, they will reflect on what they learned about success and failure and do a journal entry or a discussion forum. 

My second goal was to better evaluate the tools available and if they promote meaningful learning (what groups are at a disadvantage for accessing tools might be a better perspective. Still working out what this one means to me and on what level. Do I mean the HS students I serve or the community college students I serve within the same community, or are the groups the same group?  

I first had to decide which group of students I wanted to evaluate tools and resources for. At the end of the day, it had to be both groups. It dawned on me in week 7 of my late start FYS class that I had more than two students from the high school I serve in my classes, and some of the barriers that I would be considering for the high school students don’t go away once they graduate from high school. It might mean more work, but I am going to work at implementing new learning technology each semester. That way I can be confident and comfortable with the technology, and make sure it flows and all the content is in the new tool. I am going to explore Deck Toys further and see how I can develop content for learning activities with the high school students. I also want to explore the EdApp and see how much free content they have before I have to have a membership. I am also considering writing a grant at KCC for me to be able to implement it within the FYS content. 

My third goal is to begin to consistently use the tools that promote learning and understanding among all groups to help draw more understanding about how they learn and what they need access to. I believe this started to happen for me during my FYS course when my students were starting to share the challenges of getting their work done at home. For the high school students, I will be creating a Google Classroom for each class grade with the content relevant to what we will cover for resumes, interviewing, career exploration and a post-secondary plan. I am also working with the high school to help create a post-secondary plan that we will implement beginning with all grades this school year. The seniors and juniors will have the least amount of content in their post-secondary plan, but when the freshmen become seniors, they should have a good idea of what they are doing after high school. 

My last goal was to develop a sound foundation for a dissertation that incorporates educational technology and the disparities among the diversity groups and hopefully disseminate an idea of how to bridge gaps. I am still working on this, but hopefully after next semester, I will have a better idea and can start building each semester on the topic. 

 

This course provided me with several ways to engage and bring content to the populations of students I serve. I believe through the demonstration of the goals I set for this course; I was able to effectively meet three of the four goals. I am building out Google Classrooms for 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades. Utilizing YouScience and Xello, I will create appropriate grade activities for career assessment and be able to provide career exploration options for all 8 career pathways at the high school. 

 

 

I am also moving forward with the EdApp. It was easy to create the lessons and it provides interaction with the students. I also liked how easy the flow of the lesson is once it’s created. I feel that it could be a great tool to use when working with students to create a SMART goal. EdApp also has rewards and points within the system, so it would make it a competition in some respects (who completes the tasks to their goal first vs completing the lesson without progress towards goals). The screenshot below is what I created to replicate the American Dream game.  

 

Again, I believe because of how I structured my goals, and with outlining to implement one new educational technology to my classes each semester, I believe is a reasonable action item to continue improving my teaching practices. I also want to create my own “cheat sheet” or guide for the different pedagogies we explored this semester and provide examples of what technologies or learning objectives are falling under. 

The fourth goal I tasked myself with this semester will be what I will be working on going forward within my program. I know I am going to learn more about educational technology and learning designs in the coming semesters. Hopefully I will have a better idea of where I want to move with a thesis and working on a dissertation. I am looking forward to exploring and mastering educational technologies to better engage my students and promote learning.