EDLD 5364 - Week 4- Professional Development and Collaboration Reflection

Lesson Refection: This week many of the videos and readings dealt with professional development and collaboration tools. As technology develops, the ways to communicate with students and teachers has grown exponentially. Our students are very familiar with communicating and collaborating with their friends out of school on social networks, but our challenge as an educators is to capture that enthusiasm for social collaboration as a tool for learning.  Blogs, wikis, and podcasts are great tools which can be use to develop diversified, curriculum-based lessons. Having teachers setup communication networks with their students can be very effective, however teachers need to be trained and feel comfortable before they understand how to use them. Administrators need to empower their teachers with training and support that engage their students in the ways of the 21st century. Education is failing our students if we do not prepare them to be independent thinkers and problems solvers. By using the UDL lesson model with technology, educators have a powerful tool to provide a remarkable education to our students.