Reflecting...

     This semester in Teaching with Technology has been one of incredible insight and knowledge into my future career as a teacher. I look back thinking I was pretty digitally literate as I came into the class, but never realized how naïve I was to the whole world of technology that is readily available to utilize. 

Whether it was learning and researching about David Warlick and Glenn Jones- educational technology experts; getting to explore a realm of tools, especially those that are free alternatives for students and teachers alike; making a WIKI and Blog; learning of the multitude of ways you can use technology for communication with parents, team-members, administrators, even your students themselves; and also foreseeing how technology and the many different programs available can help students with homework and note-taking and especially gain a better understanding of the concepts being instilled; this class gave us crucial knowledge into the 21st century classroom!

     Looking back on the semester, I do have to say that there are a few things that I can single out that were amongst my favorites that I do believe I will utilize in my classroom. One being Voicethread: this tool is a presentation generator, but unlike PowerPoint or Google Docs presentations, these can have voice memos throughout and can easily be a slide of just a photograph. My assignment that I did with this program was fun, easy and can easily have students incorporated into it. I think doing projects like this and engaging the students in them will make them proud and more apt to showing their parents. It is a great way to compile students’ prized work and let them describe it straight from their mouth! Here is the presentation that I did… https://voicethread.com/#u3514400

     Another tool that I hope to be able to make the time to use and utilize is this Blog. I think a class Blog helps communicate with parents and also serves as a documentary from the year’s work and progress. It’s almost like others can be involved through the blog and the blog posts. One blog that I found as I researched educational blogs was: http://www.learningwithmrsparker.blogspot.com/  Mrs. Parker seems like she keeps this updated and maintained pretty frequently, which is so important cause you don’t want to post only one or two times a year. This is another tool that I think would be great to engage the students in as well. So they are not only reflecting on what they have done and accomplished but also utilizing and learning the technology put forth in creating and maintaining the blog. 

     Some other things that I thoroughly enjoyed throughout this class included: Creating a powerpoint of an actual assignment that we could use for our students. Offering them a visual in explaining an upcoming project helps them to understand what is expected of them and can offer examples. I also liked devising a lesson plan, it made me feel that much closer to my career! I also thoroughly enjoyed the WordClouds, I especially liked the different shapes and designs you can make through www.tagxedo.com. I call this one: Technology: Holding the Keys for a Successful Classroom! 

     All in all, I feel like I benefited in so many ways from this class. Though, I’d like to say that it gave me all I need, we all know that especially in education and technology, you can never know it all—we never quit learning. I hope to be able to utilize and incorporate so many of the things that I have learned throughout this course into my own future classroom and yet be able to attend conferences and workshops to keep my skills up to date and learn new things that are evolving every day! I hope that being a life-long learner will make me a great teacher! Thank you for a great semester Dr. Cristy!

Virtual Environments and Games in the Classroom

The use of games in the classrooms is one that has been under scrutiny, yet is proving to be very beneficial to today's students and teachers.  We can all understand why one would question whether it is appropriate to be playing games in the class, a lot of people think their children have way too much "screen time" at home through their computers, electronic devices as well as tv.  However, with so many educational games and environments available today, they are proving themselves worthy to be utilized in the classrooms offering the students a kinesthetic/hands-on approach to what they are currently learning about.  In a CNN.com report it states, "More interactive and absorbing than passive forms of entertainment like movies and TV, video games promote higher levels of engagement because observers are actively and enthusiastically involved with on-screen activity."  If teachers do enough research into games and use them at the appropriate times (and for appropriate amounts of time), it will enhance the learning for their students and their lessons.

Communication is Key

Communication is a necessity in life especially in the 21st century.  If you don't know how to communicate, chances are you aren't going to go very far.  The "old-school" communication: face-to-face/voice-to-voice has somewhat become a thing of the past.  Though, we all still obviously communicate those ways, technology has expanded a whole new world of different communication tools that you can use.  And fortunate for us, these tools are effective, efficient and extremely convenient.  A blog like this, for example, can be viewed by all my future student and their parents as well as peer educators, principals, and my team.  I can communicate what goes on in our classroom, what our objectives are for the month, what fun things we are working on, it can include special assignments, and many other things.  Another technological tool we can use to communicate in the classroom is email.  Email is a free, fast, and simple way to communicate.  Most everyone has email and during orientation of the classroom or "back-to-school" nights, you can obtain email addresses from parents to be able to send them communicative emails.  In the case that there is anyone that doesn't have email, I would make a hard copy and send home with the students or mail to their home.  Some other forms of communication described in our textbook are audio recording and videoconferencing. You can utilize these tools on your computer to either do a sound recording or a live video conference to be able to communicate with the many people teacher's are expected to communicate with.  Social networking is also a huge tool for communication in the 21st century. This allows you to interact and communicate with people all over the world. Students and teacher's alike can use social networking to communicate via pictures and status updates. You can provide feedback in a time-efficient manner. Now, not only can the teacher's incorporate all of the above tools into their means of communication but they can teach their students to utilize them as well. Teaching them how to use these correctly and accurately will enable them to use good, effective communication throughout their school years and potentially in their future careers.  It's never too early to start teaching about technology!  :)  In closing, I want to include a quote I love from the technologically advanced Bill Gates, "I am a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in!"