What I Have Learned (Reflective Blog Post)

This project has helped to open my eyes to how the public school system is currently functioning, and what technologies are currently being implemented in the school system. Back in my day the most advanced thing we had was a whiteboard and an overhead projector. Elementary schools have now expanded to include many electronic gadgets in their curriculum to attempt at bettering the learning experience of the student.

Some of the technologies that are being used now that weren't there when I was a student were the following:

• Smart Boards (this one really impressed me)
• iPads
• Kindles
• Document Camera
• Laptops
• Wifi on Buses
• Heart Monitors (used in gym classes)

It really impresses me how far we have progressed in the past few years as far as technology goes. While studying this and preparing my section of the e-book I had the opportunity to talk with many teachers that are currently implementing these technologies in the classroom. They all had pretty different opinions as to how these devices should be implemented in the classroom as well as to their effectiveness, but they all agreed that the technology has greatly improved the learning ability of the student. 

One teacher told me a story of a student that she taught that had a hard time learning how to read. The student was given an e-reader and it had a huge impact on the students literacy rate. The e-reader helped the kid to learn words by sounding out the words that the kid did not know. All he had to do is select the word and it would be sounded out for him, making it as if an adult were there reading the book to him. The student got excited and was more motivated to do his reading assignment. The result: the kid was able to progress to the same literacy level as his peers.

Another story that I enjoyed listening to was about the document camera. Teachers that use it love that they don't have to make individual overhead slides to share with the classroom. The student can visually see the object/homework assignment that the teacher places on the overhead. It helps students to easily follow along with the teacher as he or she is explaining homework to the students.

During the process of writing my section of our e-book chapter, I let some teachers read what I was writing. It was a good thing that they read it because they had a lot of insights that I did not have. I ended up having to change a lot of my first draft because it did not coincide with the opinion of the teacher. It was useful to have their expertise while writing because it helped me to know if what I was writing was really correct or not.

This class was an interesting one because of the unique way that it has been set up. I noticed though that there have been a few very general themes that have been applied throughout the entire semester: open science and open government. I would say that these two themes are what I mainly learned while taking this course, outside of the new way of learning.

I now have a different perspective on open government as well as open science. I used to be a hardcore advocate against having open science, but after hearing everyone's views I have somewhat changed my opinion to a spot on the spectrum that is more in-between. As far as open government goes, I am still un-decided on what stance to take. I see both pro's and con's to both sides so for right now I will remain undecided on that issue.

The whole "self-directed" learning thing was a very new concept to me. I have had a love/hate relationship with it. The one thing that I really enjoyed doing is being able to choose what literature that I wanted to read in order to study and prepare for class the next day. It was a nice way of doing things because you seem to absorb the information better if you are choosing what you are studying. It also allowed me to get a grasp on different concepts that other students would not have seen because they were reading something completely different from what I was. Then we would get together and share what we learned making it so that we didn't have to read everything that the other students were and were still able to learn a lot of information without having to go through all of their readings as well.

The one thing that was hard for me with the self-directed learning concept was the lack of structure. It is very hard to judge grades and things like that in a university when there isn't a set structure put in place with a true way to be able to test people and weigh how much that they truly learned.