Reflection
The process of creating the enhanced Social Studies unit that includes technology has been very enlightening! The overall process has gone smoothly and it helped that I was able to easily collaborate with our school’s technology teacher. It also helped that I was in the middle of teaching one of our Native American regions in Social Studies while creating this unit. Because I was living it, I was able to clearly see which parts of our current unit were working well and what areas could be improved and enhanced. I also feel very lucky to work in a school with so many resources. When I had different ideas, the resources needed were never roadblocks in the possibility of implementing those plans.
 |
| Image Source: Freepik |
I am still incredibly excited about this project and I look forward to implementing it in my classroom. My plan is to start implementing it with one of our Native American regions this year, make any tweaks needed, and then implement it with all 3 regions starting next year. My team plans to do the same. My team’s support and the support of our technology teacher have been the most positive aspects of this process. I particularly enjoyed learning from my school’s technology teacher which of my technology ideas were age-appropriate and which needed to be broken down further for a second grader to be successful. If I had to pick a “most negative” aspect, it would be that some of my ideas for incorporating 3D printing into my unit were too advanced for second graders. I saw my students’ excitement when they created something in technology class with the 3D printer, so I was hoping to bring some of that into this unit, but it turned out that what I had in mind would be more appropriate for 3rd or 4th grade students.
This project made me more excited at the potential to become a technology teacher down the line. While there is a lot that goes into being a learning specialist and instructional designer, it is really cool to come up with ways to combine academic standards with technology standards. If I were a technology teacher at my school, I would love to collaborate with the different grade-level teachers to see what I could do in my technology class that correlates to their classroom learning. I would also love to find co-teaching opportunities like I have created in this enhanced unit.
Comments
Post a Comment