End of Semester Reflection

  

 Within my practicum I had mainly used AI for one thing which was creating rubrics for assignments/activities. I did not do this every time as I found that the rubrics often didn’t directly align with the KUSP’s I was assessing and would grade the opposite of what I wanted it to. For example, a science final project poster was graded very heavily on art rather than science. Although, I learnt how easy it is to integrate technology as well as how effective it is for differentiation. I had a few students in my practicum classroom that were required to use chromebooks in different subjects for things such as IXL or writing assistance. By integrating technology into my entire lesson, I felt that it helped those specific students to not feel singled out and the rest of the class didn’t feel that those students had an advantage.

    The course had definitely introduced me to a wide variety of resources and how to integrate them into different subject areas/lessons, although my biggest take away from the course as well as actually using technology in the classroom was that it assisted with differentiation but I also found that technology has both positive and negative outcomes. As I began this course, and before beginning my practicum, this was essentially my burning question; Is technology more beneficial than it is detrimental? As my positives surrounded differentiation, the negatives were being able to monitor how students were using their technology. I found that most students were always on task and using their technology appropriately, but I did have the same 3-4 students who would often try to hide that they were watching Youtube or playing games. The consequence was one warning to the entire class and after that if I caught them not using technology appropriately, I had to take their chromebook away and they had to complete the assignment/activity without it.

    Technology assisted the students, myself, and my mentor teacher as it made various processes simpler as well as taught us all new concepts along the way. For example, for my mentor teacher and I, it was easier to grade assignments through a computer but we had to learn how to grade using different websites. For example, on IXL, we had to attend a staff meeting to learn how we read the students progress, how we push forward different modules, and how their progress can be translated to progress reports for parents/guardians to see. However, my mentor teacher was quite efficient with technology and a large amount of online resources. The IXL was new to her but as she has been teaching for quite some time, she has done a large amount of courses/training for this area. But for the students, once I researched and tested a technology resource, I was able to create a instructional lesson on how to use it! I introduced my students to Grammarly when they were writing fiction stories and also explained how using it can make their writing better even when they are not using it. I also taught my students how to explore digital resources and confirm whether they are accurate/can be trusted or not.

    During the process of using technology and AI throughout my practicum, I REALLY had to do my research. I am not good when it comes to technology. I turned to various blogs, websites, and Youtube videos. Essentially every time I wanted to use AI or technology for a lesson, I had to learn how to do it through research and help from other individuals' resources. I did find that the more I used a technological resources, the more confident I became. I did have to closely monitor the resources that I was using as I wanted to ensure that they can be trusted, especially if I was using it to create lesson, rubrics, or wanting my students to use it.