New and Emerging Technologies Reflection

As a district educational technologist, this course contributed directly to improving one of my job elements which is to research, design and make suggestions on future district wide technology pilot programs and purchases.

Online learning modules are widely utilized in the school system I work for because the overseas military school system supports both a virtual high school system and also a blackboard based online learning environment for educators to participate in course on. Some educators are starting to use the blackboard system as a learning resource within their own classrooms which I will expand on next school year. Because of the nature of the military, it is not unusual for students to be absent for extended periods of time so online learning modules could be very helpful in these situations.

Multi-user virtual environments (MUVE’s) are an area that, other than this course, I have very limited experience with. I do see them as potentially excellent learning environments, especially for students who spend significant amounts of time engaged in digital role-playing. I am exploring the possibility of having a group of my tech-savvy school level educational technologists design a virtual training environment and collaboration world for educators in DoDDS Europe. Once educators get hooked on the virtual environment concept, it would be much easier to get them involved in student based MUVE’s.

As part of a lesson plan I created in this course, I incorporated digital game creation as an engaging student activity. Students selecting this project option, created simple video games which incorporated accurate chemical bonding concepts and information. In addition to learning the curriculum materials, students were also developing 21^st century skills outlined on the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills website such as creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration (http://www.p21.org).

As the district educational technology instruction specialist, I also understand the realities of limited budgets and other roadblocks such as network security, over-emphasis on standardized testing and general ambivalence that stand in the way of integrating new technologies to benefit student learning. Some good news is that I received approval to create an emerging technologies task group with the other district technologists in my school system. We have a meeting scheduled in May to discuss new technologies and to outline pilot programs for next school year. I am lucky because my Superintendent is very technology aware he is interested in the information I have shared with him about the emerging technologies I have learned about in this course. The future looks bright for new and emerging technologies in my district.