Overall Reflection

I'm a bit sad that this program is coming to a close. While it has been incredibly demanding of my time, I have enjoyed the fact that I have been challenged to try new things and learn new teaching methods. This particular module has help me realize the importance of creation over consumption in the classroom. I look forward to continuing to explore new tools, and provide my students with opportunities to choose how they demonstrate their learning in the classroom.

CUE Community

My most powerful involvement in the CUE Community these past couple of weeks was attending the CUE BOLD Symposium. I attended with some other teachers from my district and it was great to be in an environment with so many innovative educators sharing ideas.

I appreciated the fact that the symposium was not focused on teaching specific tools, rather going back to the root of quality lesson design and instruction and identifying how technology can enhance the learning experience. Every session was lead by a truly innovative educator. These teachers shared how they created innovative, blended, "teched-out" lessons using the Madeline Hunter Lesson plan format. The symposium was all about pedagogy and quality instruction in an innovative, student-centered environment. It was helpful for me to get ideas about how all these pieces of 21st century learning I have been studying can come together.

In the Google Plue community I continue to learn and be inspired by my IEC peers. Kristen shared a STEM design challenge to build covered wagons that I implemented with my students. It was then exciting to meet her in person and swap notes on the lesson at CUE BOLD. I loved the idea that Jan shared about using 1 second a day. I may challenge myself to do this over the summer to share a what I did video with my student when we return to school in August. I plan to do a lot of classroom redesign work, so I think watching that in time lapse would be especially interesting to my new students.