Technology Course Learning Experience 1 Reflection

One of the most glaring ideas that has punched me in the face was the idea about being a reflective teacher. Yes, I know we hear this all the time, or at least I have in my short time as a teacher. However, I have never taken the next step in my reflective practice to journal or catalogue my reflections. Setting up this blog is just the first step in my journey to truly becoming a reflective teacher.

I recently had a conversation with a fellow teacher who is in the latter stages of his career as being a teacher and thus filled with words of infinite wisdom. I told him about this technology course that I am taking and how we needed to create a blog as part of our reflective practice. I asked him if he thought that we could truly utilize our reflective ideas if all we did was think about it and not record our ideas. His response was “yes, eventually”. This was coming from a teacher who I have grown to respect over a very short period of time mainly because he wasn’t wrong too often. As I left the conversation, I pondered about his response. Was he saying that if we eventually make the same mistakes or do the same things over and over again we will learn from it and put in in our toolkit?

What he is saying is correct – yes, eventually if we make the same mistakes over and over again or if we deal with a particular student a certain way and it is successful over and over again then we will remember it. However, I think that if we find a way that we can record our ideas to review and reflect on, then we won’t have to do it over and over again to remember the lesson. What I do think we need to do however is maybe just focus on one or two lessons that are particularly important to us as an individual teacher. There are so many lessons we could be learning on a daily basis but to really remember each and every one of lessons and take it to heart I think would be quite unrealistic. Yes, it may be possible for the select few but for the majority of us I would argue no.

To finish off the story – I ended up going back to this teacher to finish up our conversation and really clarify what he was thinking. We ended up on the same page, people learn differently, but yes, it needs to be documented in order for it to really stick. He mentioned that he journals his successes and improvements right into his lessons which will serve as a reminder the next time he uses that specific lesson.

Throughout the duration of the first few weeks of my technology course I have been fortunate to have been part of some great discussions with some excellent feedback from my peers. In addition to my thoughts above about reflective practice, another big idea that has impacted my learning is the SAMR (Substitution / Augmentation / Modification / Redefinition) model. This model represents the developmental use of technology in the classroom. Understanding the reasoning behind how and why I am using technology in my class will further help me to utilize it in a manner that is most beneficial to furthering my students’ understanding.