This class has been by far the most interesting in my graduate work. I think that mainly has to do with the members of the class and the interactions that we were able to have with one another. I think we can all agree that technology integration is the future of education but we can also agree that the future is going to be tough for education as well. From authorized use policies to BYOD policies it will never be 100% perfect. That is one thing that I learned in this class. No matter how much we think we have covered in our policies there is always going to be some new technology or other new thing that will cause us to have to change our policies and other documents. One of the things that I had already known was that a BYOD policy has many constraints. The past few years my district had been working on a possible BYOD policy for the district. It was made apparent in the discussions that a BYOD policy was out of the realm of possibility for our district. I still like the idea of a BYOD policy though at the high school level. Jeni, Christine and I all agree that preparing our students for college at the high school level is important and a BYOD policy helps with that preparation. We also spent a lot of time as a district looking at Chromebooks which lent itself to this class as well.
As a district we are getting more and more Chromebooks so that students can be using them on a more regular basis. I already knew how to create a Google Form but had not used them in an educational setting. Now I am using them for more than just education. I am creating forms for friends that need them for other things outside of education. I am able to incorporate the technology and skills into everything even outside of education. I can now create a form for interviews as well as asking students about past experiences without having answers all over the place. The best thing about forms is that it organizes the responses for you without extra effort which means analyzing the data becomes easier as well. The analysis is the important part of the educational process so that teachers can reflect. The reflection will help perfect the integration.
Technology integration is not going away in education. Since it is not going anywhere there has to be an understanding by teachers as well as by administration about the technology and the use of it in education. Professional Development is the best way for teachers to learn how to use the technology in an educational manner. Using that information and the ability to schedule that professional development to the advantage of the district to improve the teacher understanding of technology. It will be difficult to stay in front of the technology but it is important to try. If teachers understand the technology then their students will reap the benefits.
