Goal 1 - To embrace tools such as blogs, PLNs, and Twitter in an effort to enhance my teaching.
Goal 2 - Expend my knowledge base so that I am a better resource for the staff and students at my school.
Goal 3 - Enjoy learning new things with a group of new people.

I am steadily moving toward the goals I established at the beginning of the semester.  Goals 2 and 3 have seen the most growth.  I have enjoyed connecting with classmates through blogs and learning about their struggles and accomplishments.  I guess this is where my growth mindset is strongest.  I am open and willing to put in the effort to make connections and grow personally and professionally.  On the other hand, goal 1 has been a struggle.  My fixed mindset about Twitter and similar social media apps has held me back from fully embracing the power of these tools.  So far I have completed the minimum required of me in this course when it comes to Twitter and my PLN.  I need to develop a schedule to check these powerful tools and fully embrace the ways they can enhance my teaching.  This way I will not get overwhelmed.

Reflection on Course Materials

The articles and videos present a way of teaching that is exciting and somewhat new to me.  Teaching children to think for themselves has been a goal of mine since I started teaching 16 years ago, but the addition of technology has made this an ever changing task.  This self sufficient learning style has been on my mind even more now that I have two children of my own.  I want them to have a desire to be lifelong learners, but I find it difficult helping them with this task at times.  Growing up I found it easy to pick up new tasks without much effort, and I sometimes have a hard time relating to people that are struggling to learn.  Recently the tables have turned with the influx of technology.  My kids have more information in the palm of their hands than I did the entire time I was in school.  In fact I thought I was something else in my high school programming class because my monochromatic monitor was amber instead of green like all of the others.

Opening the door of project based learning and integrating technology has helped me to learn new things along with my students.  I hope to continue embracing new tech and teaching techniques as they emerge.