Educ 6714 Reflection

As this course draws to a close, my cohorts and I are to reflect back upon what we have learned and how we will implement these things into our teaching. There were a few different aspects of the course that worked together to make it a very beneficial learning experience: the typical applications and discussions, as well as a differentiation station that involved social networking.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the social networking activity that we have done for this course. It was an invaluable collaboration resource, and I learned about several useful resources for differentiating instruction through our social network. I have also formed some valuable friendships through the social network, escpecially after conducting the online collaborative "meeting", through which we got to really know one another, and interact and learn from each other in a whole new way. We continue to discuss not only the assigned topics for this course, but other aspects of teaching, and even personal issues, and I'm sure we will continue to remain in contact through the technology that we originally used for this course.

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to implement the social networking aspect of this course into my teaching, as my district has a blanket "no social networking sites" policy. It is unfortunate that I cannot share this excellent means of obtaining real-time clarification of assignments, discussion of methods of completing assignments, and support of one another during the learning process. My cohorts and I enjoyed it very much, and our learning was greatly enriched because of it.

In my social network, several resources were listed for implementation of Universal Design for Learning. The two that I believe that I will use most will be tech4di.wikispaces.com and internet4classrooms.com/di.htm They listed several activities that can bring differentiation into my teaching, and even had databases through which one can put in the type of activity and find ways to differentiate it.

As far as making immediate adjustments to my teaching, I have already incorporated the use of Voicethreads for vocabulary learning, to differentiate the learning experience for the students. We have been using this for the past three vocabulary lists, and I have seen a drastic increase in not only student participation, but also the percentage of simple retention, and a huge increase in the students' ability to internalize the words and use them with greater fluency. The visual representations, and the ability to include audio and review as needed at home, has given a much greater impact to the learning, and has allowed students that had a difficult time with the more traditional methods of memorizing better ways to remember the material.

This course has been a very beneficial learning experience for me, and I will be using a great deal of what I have learned to continue to differentiate instruction and assessment for my varied learners.