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!
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