Reflection for EDUC 6712

The most striking revelation I had about the teaching of new literacy skills to my students is how to correctly show my students to use the internet. My students use the internet often and I usually tell them what websites to use, but now I can correctly teach them to use the internet themselves. One way that I can teach my students to correctly use the internet is to teach them “The ABC’s of a Website” created by Beth Phillips (Laureate Education, 2009). I can also share with them the “topic + focus” method developed by Eagleton and Guinee and described by Eagleton and Dobler in their book “Reading the Web” (2007). By showing my students these strategies, I will be giving them the tools to use the internet and streamline their research process.

I feel the knowledge and experienced I gained in this course will greatly improve my teaching practices. I have learned a lot of new ways to improve my teaching and lesson planning. My students will benefit even more than me because they will be gaining 21st century skills like what Dr. Hartman describes communicating as “sharing information on-line through wikis, blogs, and other tools” (Laureate Education, 2009). I now will be able to incorporate new literacy skills that will develop my student’s ability to use technology and communicate in a 21st century classroom.

One professional development goal I would like to work on is my ability to create a student centered classroom on a daily basis. Dr. David Warlick says to “help them learn to teach themselves” (Laureate Education, 2009) and I want this to be my goal. I would like to see my class working on research projects while using all new types of technology. As my teaching career continues to develop, I would then like to be able to teach other teachers to use technology to have a student centered project based class like the one I created. Those are some of my professional goals that I have developed from this class.


References

Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the web: Strategies for internet inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom. Baltimore: Author.