#19 Open Post--Self-Reflection

At the beginning of this course, I set five technology goals for myself:

1.  Increase my proficiency with iStation, an on-line reading assessment/curriculum program that Frisco ISD recently implemented.
2.  To become more familiar with Excel--functions, sorting, etc.

3.  To learn how to create graphs of my students' fluency rates.

4.  To match technology to the curriculum that I teach--What am I teaching now in the area of reading that I could teach better with technology?

5.  To complete the on-line technology course in which I am currently enrolled. Although this is a short term goal, my learning curve is so great that I will definitely consider completion a major accomplishment!

So, how have I done with these five goals?  I believe I have made progress on four of the five.  The only one I have not really done any work on is number three--creating graphs of my students' fluency rates.  I feel very comfortable with iStation at this point...I have even conducted some staff development on my campus over the program.  I scored a 17/20 on the spreadsheet I created for this class.  In addition, I have some concrete ideas for blending technology with the curriculum that I teach.

While these three are important, goal number five is the most significant to me.  Although I have not yet completed the course, I am beginning to see the "light at the end of the tunnel!"  I keep reminding myself of the Little Engine that could, "I think I can, I think I can, etc."  Prior to this course, I had very real barriers in my mind to technology because of my personal experience.  Technology and I have a "love/hate" relationship!  While I recognize the need for technology for efficiency, etc., I typically have very bad luck when it comes to operating a computer!  I want to use the computer, but I am skeptical as well.  Knowing that I have almost completed a masters level technology course has done great things for my self-esteem regarding technology.  Because of some of my successes, I feel much more confident.  That is not to say that there have not been bumps in the road this semester during the class.  I do think though that pressing through these "bumps" without much instruction has helped me tremendously!  If I do have trouble, I at least now know of some resources (i.e. Atomic Learning) to turn to for help. 

Although I haven't done any work on graphing my students' fluency scores, I feel far my confident in my abilities to go and seek out how to create these graphs myself.  It reminds me of the assignment to create a database with a mail merge document for my technology class.  I did not receive any credit for the first assignment submission because I had not met the rubric criteria--nothing was done correctly!  In fact, when I started the assignment the first time, I had to google which program to use to even begin creating a database!  See, my learning curve has been huge!  My second attempt, after some instruction, went much more smoothly...in fact, I got all 20 points for the assignment the second time!  Because of this small success, I will be more eager to figure out how to graph my students' fluency scores.