In classrooms throughout America, there are diverse populations of students in each classroom, all of which have unique backgrounds and varying learning experiences. There are students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, and students who have different life experiences, all of which affect their learning goals, experiences, and connections to the real world. As educators in today's classrooms, we have the responsibility to ensure that we provide all of our students equitable and premier learning experiences in our clasroomss with this knowledge in mind to ensure we are creating equitable and culturally rich learning environments for all of our students. Throughout the Instructional Technology program at Kennesaw State University, the coursework has led me to become more culturally aware of my students, their backgrounds, and life experiences. For example, I was previously unaware of how gender and socioeconomic divides are so prevalent in today’s classrooms. I was also unaware of how great the Covid-19 Learning gaps were across America and how so many students are part of the geographical divide in regard to equitable access to technology and internet in their homes. I feel that I have grown in my abilities to evaluate digital tools and resources to determine if they will be valuable and beneficial to address the needs of various groups of students. I am also more aware of how technology tools can help students of diverse backgrounds experience the content of their courses in ways that are meaningful and relatable to them. I have also become stronger in my abilities to assess students appropriately design their learning experiences based on their learning needs and learning styles in manners that maximize instructional time and provide premier learning experiences. Finally, throughout the course of this program, I have learned that technology facilitators must develop positive and trusting relationships with the colleagues that they will be working with. Additionally, they must believe that all students matter and that including their life experiences and backgrounds into creating lessons utilizing digital tools and resources is vital to creating culturally responsive twenty-first century classrooms. Below are a few examples that demonstrate my abilities to develop culturally rich, differentiated, and premier classrooms.
Completing field experiences where I designed blended and online learning experiences implementing activities using a variety of modalities to appeal to different learning styles.
Capstone Project “The Power of Student Portfolios”: through this project, I collaborated with classroom teachers to deepen student’s accountability and self-reflection skills through analyzing data through both teacher and peer conferencing and tracking the data in digital portfolios.
ITEC 7445 Assistive Technology Experience: I was able to create a plan for a hearing impaired students to use an assistive technology device to improve their comprehension skills.
ITEC 7482 Online Learning Experience: I planned, researched, created, and implemented an online learning and blended learning experience for my students. Through this experience, I also learned how to create a personalized learning environment based on various student learning styles and cultural backgrounds to make the learning more meaningful and equitable for my students.
ITEC 7410 SWOT Analysis and Action Plan: I was able to research and determine the best practices to implement to improve the school and set new goals and action steps to meet the unique learning styles of diverse students.
ITEC 7445 Webquest: I learned how to create a technology-rich project that offered students a variety of activities in varying modalities that appealed to different learning styles, diverse backgrounds and various differentiation methods to ensure equitable learning experiences were provided for all students.