Final Day Reflections

20 July 2016

Final Day Reflections

This has been a whirlwind of a course. I had never heard of most of the technologies we studied, and even for the few that I had heard of I had no detailed knowledge.

Take-away #1: I feel like my opinion of technology has undergone a radical shift.I still think that our society is over-reliant on screen media and that kids especially should limit their screen time . . .  but I had never fully thought about how tech could help those who can't otherwise communicate. I added ideas about assistive tech to the projects I did in other courses as a result of all the learning I did here ( made a model daycare for another course and had originally envisioned it as tech-free; I made some key changes to reflect assistive tech in my imagined environment).

Take-away #2: I wish that the technologies we spent a lot of time on such as Book Creator and iMovie were available on technologies other than the iPads. I plan to allow more Bring-Your-Own-Tech in my classes as a result of this; even if only a few kids have iPhones or iPads, they can share in order to make use of these technologies.

Take-away #3: Assistive tech doesn't have to mean high-tech! I loved our Dollarama excursion; what an eye-opening experience. This was my favourite part of the course, because sometimes it feels like the problems of getting assistive tech to our students are insurmountable, and this was a reminder that we can actually make a huge difference with readily-available, inexpensive stuff.


I always have a hard time summing up my thoughts and feelings about any intense, high-learning process. Looking back over the course, I find what stands out for me, more than any specific lesson or technology,  is the sense of discovery and applicability. This stuff matters, I kept thinking. This is relevant and real and urgent. I can go to my classroom in September and make use of everything I learned.

I'm going to try to add our video to this blog (apparently it takes forever to do that!)