EDLD 5352 Assignment

I just finished taking a (small) battery of assessments on how effectively I use technology in the classroom for my graduate school class on Instructional Leadership. It was really interesting to think about my own technology use in the classroom and try to assess what prevents me from using technology as often as I should.

In thinking about my strengths as a leader in technology, I think the first thing that comes to mind is that I'm willing to take a lot of risks with instruction. If it's research based, I'll give it a whirl. Even if I think a strategy or a piece of technology might not fit in with my style, I'll try it once, or sometimes even twice to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Our school librarian has used me as an example of a teacher who's using digital resources regularly. This risk-taking attitude is one that I could pass along to the staff at my school. Sometimes, we are so focused on what we're trying to do to meet the rigorous demands of our assessments that we forget that we need to meet our students where they are; where they are is the 21st century.

In the assessments, I realized that I'm not particularly good at solving problems using technology. There's a lot of software that I don't know very much about. I was especially humbled by the amount of audio and visual technology that I don't know how to use. I'd love to have my students make movies or videos, but I don't know how to help them troubleshoot if something goes wrong with the technology.

I also realized that some of the challenges I have in using technology are systemic and outside of my control unless I move into a leadership position at my school. There's a massive disparity between the campuses in my district. My school has so many more resources than our sister school in Brownsville and than the new campuses that were launched last fall. Compared to them, we're way ahead of the game.

Still, I think I'd be a more technological teacher if I could count on the technology we have, or at least be able to count on tech support if something went terribly wrong. In the meantime, I realized the importance of creating systems and procedures for technology use in my classroom. I think having procedures would really strengthen my use of the resources that I do have access to.