Week Five - Reflection

Reflection

As a school administrator and instructional leader, I would like to see various tools and applications written into the curriculum. Such technology as Power Point, Photostory (or another application were pictures and music can be downloaded), Email, Spreadsheets (Excell), a word processing program (Microsoft Word), should be seen in the written, taught, and tested curriculum of a school district in order to prepare students for the future. With technology changing so quickly, I feel that the instructional technology piece would need to be reviewed and updated at least every other year, where as we have a curriculum review cycle that is set up on a 4 year rotation. Our district currently assesses our 8th grade students with a formal assessment and the percentage of students who are “technologically literate” are reported to the state. Our current assessment includes excell, powerpoint, and Microsoft Word, but it does not include any Web 2.0 tools.

There are so many wonderful Web 2.0 tools that can be used to differentiate instruction and it would very much depend upon the age, grade and objective of the lesson. There were several excellent suggestion in the Week Five UDL blog, such as LetterPop for newsletters, Photostory for telling stories, ZohoShow for creating posters, Timeliner to help students create and visualize the concept of time, PowerPoint can be used for many different things, Blogger and Google Docs are great tools for collaboration. I also like Starfall and BrainPop for fun tutoring type exercises. Many of the textbooks that we purchase for our district have companion websites that use videos, quizzes, and other fun activities that students seem to enjoy.