A Successful Change Agent - Reflection Reflection Blog Posting

A Successful Change Agent - Reflection
Reflection Blog Posting

This course has stressed how new and emerging technologies have transformed the learning process in the school environment. In the educational setting students can no longer relate to the traditional curriculum methods of lectures, textbooks, and paper and pencil but instead have mobilized it with new digital tools (Soloway, 2010). These particular digital tools incorporate graphics with texts in delivering a more appropriate multimodal instruction. The new and emerging technologies allow the students to learn by doing by collaborating in multi-user virtual environments, using gaming activities, and through the use of learning modules. The use of these tools encourages important 21st century skills such as student collaboration and anytime, anywhere learning (Young, Birtolo, & McElman, 2009). Skills are essential in developing the necessary tools for students to have for their future.

Digital games and simulations play a huge role in our students personal interests. Students are engaged with these activities because they play a personal role in accomplishing a task (Gee, 2005). By being actively involved in the situations and directing their own learning by making decisions students develop a deeper understanding through this process (Foti, 2007). In the implementation of my lesson plan I recognized this fact and combined a Science Court gaming activity with the iPad an emerging piece of technology.

The science lesson on Electricity required the students to use their iPads to look up important vocabulary and complete a webquest in their designated groups. After students completed their webquest their groups were assigned characters participated in a Science Court gaming activity. Students were able to use their iPads to complete their responses to all activities, conduct research, and digitally store textbooks.

I believe the iPad is a great new and emerging technology for students to utilize to enhance their learning. This tool not only has over 300 educational tools across the content area to increase student performance but it also has word processing, presentation tools, and global networking capabilities supporting one-to-one computer access for students. For these reasons I found this device to be rather impressive and have already begun to influence my students who have access to this tool to adopt it as a learning tool. For example, in order to support my special needs students it provides applications for translation, flashcards, digital books, simulations, and tutorial aids to assist the student in their assignments. It also has several digital notebook applications and agendas for the student to use to keep them organized. I believe the adoption of these tools support 21st century learning skills will allow the student to customize their own learning and the ability to construct artifacts to demonstrate and share their learning.

In summary, I believe in supporting 21st century skills the gaming activity and the use of the iPad provided a successful example of providing educational technology within my lesson. In this lesson students will be able to collaborate, share, and communicate ideas using critical thinking skills with authentic learning experience in order to develop new knowledge. They will also have the ability to have access and work with a tool, which is presently being used in the business world giving them the opportunity to learn real life skills necessary for their future.


Foti, S. (2007). Did we leave the future behind? Phi Delta Kappan, 88(9), 647–649

Gee, J. P. (2005). Good video games and good learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 85(2),
33–37.

Soloway, E. (2010, January). New and Emerging Technologies. “Mobile Devices and the
Future”. (Laureate, CD-ROM, 2010 release).

Young, J., Birtolo, P., & McElman, R. (2009). Virtual success: Transforming education
through online learning. Learning & Leading with Technology, 36(5), 12–17.