Reflection on My Digital Toolbox

At the beginning of this course, we were introduced to several teaching concepts that deal with technology. The first tool was the TPACK framework, which supports using a balance of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge when teaching. I figured out early on that since I was never officially trained to be a teacher, I am strong in the areas of technology and content, but weak in pedagogy. That is certainly the area where I feel like I have made the most growth over the past few months, but it was also the area where I struggled the most when developing my digital toolbox. It was easy for me to pick up the technology required to use most of these tools, and I certainly have a solid grasp of the content that needs to be conveyed using the digital tools. The hardest part was figuring out how to best utilize the tool to convey the knowledge to my students. 

Another concept that we were introduced to was the SAMR model. Because I teach a computer literacy course, I have already been utilizing substitution and augmentation. I have used some of the tools that I included in my digital toolbox to create assignments that are modifications of the way that I have historically done things, but I am not sure that I have made it to the redefinition stage yet.

I am very excited about all of the tools that I have included in my digital toolbox. As I look back over the semester that I just finished, I will be evaluating each assignment with these tools in mind and looking for ways where learning can be improved using the technology that is available. 

I used Diigo to create my digital toolbox and found that it worked very well. They recently added a tool called an outliner, which let me easily organize my links into categories where I could add comments describing why I saved the links. I actually saved a lot of links over the course of the semester. In addition to the Tools for Creating Course Content section that I created for my EDU 653 course, I added a section for sites with interesting reading (if I discovered a blog in the course of my research that I felt would probably contain interesting or useful information, I bookmarked it to visit on a regular basis), a section with resources for research, one for gamification, which was a concept that I found particularly appealing and want to explore more when I have some free time. I have included a screenshot of the Outliner page of my Diigo below. As you can see, each tool has comments associated with it to help me remember what it does. The numbers are for evaluating the usefulness of the site and come from a framework developed in my Emerging Technologies course. 

I was struggling with the best way to organize my tools until the Outliner functionality was added. Having one long list of links to go through quickly got overwhelming. Being able to assign each link to an outliner category gave me an easy way to categorize my links, and adding tags can further help this process. Diigo is a wonderful bookmarking site and I am sure that I will continue to add links to my page and use those links to find resources that can help me to be a better teacher. 

As far as the digital toolbox assignment goes, I feel like it was a very important part of this course, but because it wasn't due until the end it was treated almost as an afterthought. I think that this could be an even more useful assignment if we were required to share our toolboxes with the other students. Using some kind of screen capture tool to create a video walk-through of the tools that were found and how they might be used would be very beneficial. If the students were divided into groups based on the grade level that they teach, they could share with their group the tools that they found and how they plan to use them. People could share comments on tools that they have in common and compare how they use them. If someone has experience with a tool they could share what worked and what didn't. It would be a great way to get new insights. I feel that the number of tools available and the many different ways that they can be used can be overwhelming. I find it very helpful to see what other people are doing, what works, and what doesn't. I have done a lot of my learning how to teach through trial and error. I appreciate every opportunity that I get to learn from other people's experience.

Emerging Technologies has been a wonderful course. It has given me so many new ideas about how to do things that it is all I can do not to completely redesign the courses I am teaching right now. I will be introducing some of the concepts that I learned next semester and will be expanding on that next year when we update our textbooks. I have no doubt that my students will appreciate all that I have learned.