2010-2011 School Year End Reflection

As the school year comes to a close, I thought it might be helpful for me to reflect on
my journal entries as a way to review some of the strategies and techniques that worked for me this year.

One of the first issues I encountered this year was keeping students on task. Despite
being naturally attracted to technology students get easily distracted with all this
technology at their fingertips, making it's too easy for them to give in to temptation, to
login to their favorite social networking, chat or music site, to look for sneakers on the
net or the hundreds of other things that seem more interesting, especially when they
decide that what's happening in class "is boring".

To counter this tendency towards distraction and to keep students "on task", I had to
moderate my classroom practices to incorporate these strategies: Review with all
students the technology lab policy for responsible web use, utilize the SmartSync lab
software to monitor student detachment and recommend student placement into other
non-computer classes for non-compliance.

This year, I tried adding group learning to the project agenda. As I suspected, group
learning posed the greatest challenge to completing a project because of student
disagreement due to social incompatibility, absent members not completing daily tasks
and differing work styles. I adjusted my lessons to include more descriptions and
examples that helped better define group learning expectations and outcomes,
watched a video of team interaction to illustrates group learning and practiced group
learning with trial exercises.

I experimented with using a didactic approach to teaching computer science which
allowed the opportunity to simplify, summarize and annotate difficult subject matter
with examples, stories, and anecdotes that helped to illustrate or illuminate the material.
To make it work, I needed to shift to a more student-centered strategy, breaking the
content up into pieces, presenting each concept individually instead of as a unit,
integrating the lab with the lecture, requiring each piece to be completed before
moving on with content and the lab, and pairing students up with "topcoders", the few
who display more interest in the subject matter and are more motivated to complete
the tasks on time.

This year, I incorporated SmartResponse technology into my lesson plans. Ordinarily, I
would review important concepts at the end of a series of content sessions. To prod
students along, I changed this process and reviewed important concepts as we were
completing them at the end of every unit lab instead of before and at the end. As we
looked at the material again, we could also discuss ways in which they could apply the
concept to complete labs. Also, I would set up a series of questions from those asked
in class which I would later use as the end of unit quiz. From time to time, we would
stop to discuss concepts and their application. Students would use SMARTResponse to
respond. I would also include opinion statements along the way, asking if they were
comfortable with this topic or needed more examples.

Finally, I experimented with using portfolios, a series of independent, separate yet
related projects completed at their own pace, in my classroom to keep students engaged in and productive with their own education despite being absent many times. By creating a series of readings, labs, exercises, and programs that would indicate demonstrated competency of the subject matter when completed, students were able to work on labs, do exercises and code programs on their own as well as create a reflection, a written debriefing about what they did, what went right and what went wrong. Students remained engaged and completed the assignments at their own pace. However, as students started to miss days, they became more removed from the material.

2011 proved an interesting opportunity not only to present technology to another generation of students, but more importantly, to use technology to assist with solving classroom issues. Getting experience using technology in this "assistive" capacity will be an asset when developing and delivering courseware for next year.