Reflective Paper

On Internship Experience

This experience has been unique in that I was able to incorporate the lessons and activities into my sixth grade language arts curriculum. This combination worked very well. The process kept the attention of the students and improved their presentations.

The merge of these two activities was a selling point when I approached my principal about doing my internship at Deepwater Junior High (DWJH). He did not mind at all as long as I taught sixth grade language arts. In fact, he encouraged me to use the technology I learned at UHCL.

I am a strong advocate for using technology in the classroom. Instruction and curriculum can be interesting and fun when technology, especially multimedia, is involved. Technology can provide a source for students to prove what they have learned while also being exposed to real-life experiences.

As part of my internship, I created two webquests, one on pirates and the other on the Middle Ages. My students were successful and enjoyed them so much that they asked for more webquests. The feedback I received from my students was that the webquests were easy to use and investigating different topics of a theme was engaging. They also enjoyed the culminating activities because they learned about other topics from their peers, and it was something they could share with their families, since it was linked to a webpage. The students also found the different multimedia required for the wequests pleasurable to learn.

The output my students produced were impressive. Some went beyond the requirement of the assignments and produced extra work on their own. It proved that imagination and technology could be combined and improved learning and understanding of the subjects.

Before each individual assignment, I introduced the students to the software they would need to use in the assignments. Through mini lessons in PowerPoint, Inspiration, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word, and by taking the software one at a time, the students did not feel overwhelmed by the choice of options to complete the assignments.

The journey leading up to this internship was like a roller coaster ride. The masters program was not as I had expected. I thought we would learn how to troubleshoot computer problems in addition to learning how to incorporate technology in the classroom.

Some of the required classes were confusing and a chore to complete. In particular, the grant writing class was one of the worst experiences I had at UHCL. To this day, I cringe whenever I hear or read the word “grant.”

I was terrified of statistics because I had developed a math phobia taking college mathematics. However, I had a great instructor for statistics that taught in a way that helped me get past my phobia.

Some of the classes that dealt with theory were hard for me because I found them very stagnant. I preferred the hands-on classes like the multimedia sessions where a product was produced. In fact, I incorporated a few techniques I learned in Advanced Technology Applications into my webquests. There are several examples of rubrics, creating a storyboard and a digital story in my webquests.

Though the software for multimedia presentations is relatively inexpensive, I personally had to spend several hundred dollars for the web page developer and an enhancer. In order to complete my internship at DWJH, I had to purchase Dreamweaver and Flash out of my own pocket. My district uses only Dreamweaver to create webpages and would not let me create a webpage unless I had the software. I purchased Flash to create a digital story; although we also used PowerPoint for this assignment. DWJH already had Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Inspiration and Draw, which were used by the students.

Overall, the Instructional Technology program has been valuable to me in the classroom. Utilizing multimedia is an effective way to get students involved in their own learning and exposing them to real-life experiences. My students and I enjoy multimedia. It makes learning and teaching enjoyable. Other teachers have given feedback about how enthusiastic my students have been about using webquests and I have agreed to develop webquests for other grade levels at DWJH.