Post 1: Setting Goals & Burning Questions

 Post 1: Setting Personal Goals 

Beginning of The Semester Reflection 

In this journal entry, you will discover my personal goals and ambitions for this semester. These goals include my professional responsibilities, planning for learning, facilitating learning, assessment, environment, and inclusive environment. I will also be including my previous experience of educational technology and any burning questions that I possess to know about the use of digital technology in a classroom. 

Personal Learning Goals:

Professional Responsibilities 

"Engages with colleagues in professional learning." 

My goal for this semester with this competency is to learn how to create more meaningful and professional relationships with my fellow colleagues. I have a tendency to not vocalizing my opinion and taking the initiative in the school. I have often migrated towards my mentor, not venturing out to meet other faculty members, and offering to help around the school. This semester, I am planning on pushing myself out of my comfort zone to create connections with my peers, other teachers in my practicum school, as well as familiarizing myself with all staff. By stepping out of my comfort zone and creating more meaningful relationships, I am hoping that will aid in opportunities in my learning, and contributing to the school. 

Planning for Learning 

"Translate outcomes into coherent short, medium, and long-range plans." 

With this competency, my goal is to become more comfortable with planning medium and long-range plans that flow throughout the term. I struggle with seeing the big picture and putting all the pieces together for most subjects. I am wanting to work with my class assignments, use my peers, and my mentor teacher to guide me, give advice, and guide me so that I can efficiently create a long and medium-range plan for all subjects. This ties in with my goal of professional responsibilities, I need to be more confident and create professional relations so that I feel comfortable enough to ask advice to aid in my lesson planning. 

Facilitating Learning 

"Paces lessons appropriately for all students including time for reflection and closure."

Planning according to time and students is something that I struggled with during my first two years of education. I never know how much time each student will need, and what other activities I should plan for the students that finish early. I do not want to plan more worksheets or work for students who finish early, I do not want them to feel like they are being punished. I find that one of the reasons I struggled is that I was only with the students for one day a week, for a limited amount of time. This semester, my goal is to work more with the students to find their strengths and weaknesses, as well, work more with my practicum teacher to plan accordingly, while having back up activities for students. 

Assessment

"Creates multiple and varied assessment tools that align with outcomes."

Being a high school graduate of over 7 years, the given assessment in my classes were usually in the form of an essay, quiz, or a test. Now being in education, I find that sometimes I struggle coming up with a variety of assessments in certain subjects, especially math. I have found, so far, that our textbook touches on a variety of different resources, as well, my peers have amazing ideas. To continue growing my resources and knowledge, I am planning on creating a mass document where I can track the different forms of assessment, and what works best for specific students. I also know that while I am in my practicum, I can talk to my mentor teacher, and other faculty members, to collaborate on different assessment tools. 

Inclusive Environment 

" Creates and manages effective classroom routines and procedures to promote positive, engaging learning environments." 

This year we were supposed to observe the first couple of days of school to see how a teacher creates a positive classroom environment, as well as how they create their teacher presence, and how they present procedures and regulations. Unfortunately due to all the changes of 2020 with the virus, this was something that was missed. I find that I am still struggling to imagine how I would create and maintain an effective classroom environment. To make up for my lack of confidence in this competency, I plan on working with my peers, professors, mentor teacher, and other professional peers to discuss how they obtain this goal. I also plan to research different papers and videos that explain effective ways to create a positive environment from day one in a classroom, and techniques on maintaining them. 

Previous Educational Technology Experience: 

In most of my educational experiences, I have been dealing with younger grades where a majority of their technology basis comes from the SMART Board, and I struggled with those. Most of the time, I had students or my mentor teacher aid me in their process. During my grade 6 practicum, I learned about Kahoot! and how I could project that onto the board from the laptop, then the students could interact. An area where I have had some experience but struggle in is apple products. I do not have strong knowledge of the apple interface, and that is something I struggle with within the classroom. Personally, though, I have become more comfortable with online video callings, such as Zoom and Google Meet. As well, I have been working with students D2L, moodle, and other online school systems. 

Burning Questions:

My burning question for this semester is: how do we make sure as educators that technology is aiding in the students learning experience instead of creating a distraction and more complications. In some of my practicums and personal experiences, I find that students are staring at an LED screen not paying attention to the learning experience. As well, they get distracted by other multimedia that is available through their devices. I would like to know, as an educator, how do we manage this?