EDTECH 501 Reflection

As with  many moments in life, when you first start out you think it's going to take forever to get to the end.  Then when you are at the end, you marvel at how quickly the time has passed.  That is how I feel about this semester.  

As I reflect on the last 16 weeks I remember the anxiety of wondering if I'm ever going to master APA or be able to manage my time so I complete the assignments by the deadline.  I can also now reflect on how much I have learned, even though a lot of the time felt like playtime as we looked at different technologies.  

Coming from a business environment I found it fascinating learning what happens in a school environment and the challenges teachers face everyday to help future generations learn and be prepared for entering the workforce.  I have a brand new admiration for teachers and know that our children are in great hands.  I also appreciated observing the passion for education many of my classmates expressed.  I felt akin to them because even though I work in a business environment I have the same passion and struggle with the same issues.  Seeing that connection between an school environment and a business environment was the most beneficial and mind expanding aspect of this course for me.  

The biggest challenge I faced in this course was learning APA.  I hadn’t used it before so I struggled with understanding and applying it to my papers.  The resources presented to us in this class though helped me double check my referencing and hopefully as I progress in this degree I might feel more confident in referencing.   Other challenges were trying to balance work, life and assignments.  I had to travel for work a few times this semester, so completing some assignments were more of a challenge than others when I realized that Google Drive doesn't work on my company issued laptop.  Thankfully the second time I had to travel I had already completed most of my assignment for that week and when I returned home I was able to submit my assignment on time.

My favorite artifact was my HapYak video I authored even though I didn't end up using it as my submitted artifact for that week's assignment.  I ended up doing a few more videos and we recently showed them to our Talent Management Director who thought they were fantastic.  We are now going to look into possibly purchasing HapYak so we can present information to our employees in this light hearted format rather than via email.  Plus I liked it because it made me giggle.

This course has opened up my mind in regards to how we might be able to be more creative with inserting technology in our current learning and development curriculum.  We don't necessarily need to make huge investments in technology but by just being strategic and infusing technology into our programs we can make learning more interactive and engaging for our learners.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course and loved getting to know my classmates.

Enjoy your summer!

Course Syllabus

School/Business Evaluation Summary

Our last assignment for EDTECH 501 was to rate a school or business based on the Technology Maturity Model.  Because I'm not based in a school, the thought of trying to apply this to a business setting initially seemed overwhelming.  However, as I learned more about the Technology Maturity Model I realized, as with many concepts in this program, they also can be applied to a business setting.

Center Square is ranked overall in the Intelligent level of technology integration, mainly because technology is used as part of the day-to-day work of its employees.  While technology is accessible to all employees that doesn't always translate into utilization of the technology.  Training employees to better utilize and have adequate access to technology already within the company is a challenge that Center Square needs to address.
Because of Center Square's large employee population, innovative technologies cannot be implemented easily.    This creates a barrier for our employees who are trying to deliver innovative and creative solutions to our clients.

I found this project interesting and challenging as I initially thought Center Square would rank as Integrated.  However, after going through the matrix with some of my colleagues I realized that while we still have some way to go in our use of technology, we are more technologically integrated than I had thought.  We are lacking in areas of training and innovation, however, these areas we are actively addressing and hope to improve on in the coming years.  In five years time it would be helpful to perform this analysis again to see if our ranking has improved, especially in some of the behavioral areas.


School/Business Evaluation Summary
Maturity Benchmarks Survey