What I've Learned I feel as if I have learned quite a bit in this course. This course has given me the opportunity to try out different technologies that I do not think I would have used without this course. I feel like we are about to enter a time period in education that is going to require us to use any mode necessary to help reach our students, and this class gives you just about all types of technologies to use. This fall is going to look quite different than any other fall in probably the last 50 years of education, some schools are doing full on virtual learning, so are doing hybrid models, and some are doing a somewhat traditional method. The technologies that we used in this course can be used for all three settings, especially the virtual/hybrid styles. As we enter into this realm of unknown, we can fall back on a lot of what we used in this class to help us stay afloat. Learning Tools
Strengths and Weaknesses I feel like one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to technology in education is taking the time to try and implement technology in my classroom. This was something that I wanted to do last year, but I never spent the time trying to figure out how to incorporate technology into my lessons. Some of the problem was not knowing exactly all technologies were out there, and a part of the problem was my lack of time management. I feel like one of my strengths is that I can generally figure out how to use technology pretty quickly, even if it's not something I'm used to using. Fortunately, I am a quick learner when it comes to the tech side of things, so I feel like I I can pick up these different tools and put the into use pretty quick. Classroom Integration I fully plan to use quite a bit of these tools in my classroom. I think that children today are more apt to use technology than any generation before them. Most of them have a smart phone before they are a teenager, and they always like to have a screen in front of them. I think it is our job as educators to adjust to them, we should look for ways to meet them where they are instead of force them to do what we want them to do. I feel like integrating technology is a part of that. My goals going forward are to:
This class has been super helpful in helping me discover different types of technological tools that I can use in my classroom.
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Question 1
Project ten years into the future. You have now been a classroom teacher for the past 7-8 years. Technology has probably changed significantly between the time you completed your student teaching and now. What options have you considered – and perhaps taken – to stay current in technology? I do not think it will be very difficult for me to stay current in technology over the next 10 years. My bachelor's is in Computer Science, so I have a pretty big interest in technology. I'm always on my phone, I follow quite a few tech guys on twitter and Youtube that help keep me up to date on the newest phones, laptops, and random other tech accessories. I do not foresee me losing interest in this field over the next 10 years, but I do think that social will play a large part in me staying current. I do realize, however, that not all teachers are in this boat. For teachers who do not care about technology as much, I think professional development would be an easy way to stay up to date. Most PD days offer breakout sessions for teachers to choose where they wish to go. Every PD I've been too has had a technology in the classroom breakout session where there were 2-3 teachers discussing what technology they used in the classroom. I think this could be extremely useful to helpful for those teachers who might not keep up with technology otherwise. Reflection Question 1: Assume that one of your students tells you that an enrichment class at your school has developed a website and that every student’s name and picture will be available on the website as a talent directory. What concerns do you have about this discovery and how would you approach your colleague and your school to address these concerns? I think there are a few layers to this situation. First, all schools have some type of policy concerning adding students picture onto the internet. For instance, some schools send home a waiver at the start of the year, while some might only send home the waiver if their child might be in some project or experiment that would require them to be uploaded online. My first concern would depend on my schools policy regarding this, if my school had gotten permission from parents to upload pictures of their child to the internet, then I wouldn't really have any concerns. However, this is a small chance, as there would realistically be a very small chance that our school got that waiver back from every single student in the school. So I'll go through other concerns assuming my school most likely didn't get that waiver from every parent, and some that still apply even if they did get the waiver signed. One concern I would have is if the parents had knowledge of this website. Even if they signed a waiver at the start of the school year giving the school permission, this is still a project that I feel parents should know of. If I knew this colleague well, I would approach my colleague in a respectful manner to double check that they let parents know that this was going to happen. I would also make sure that my colleague let the administration know this was happening. Even if parents are fine with it, the administration still also need to know of a project of this nature. However, if I was not close with this colleague, then I would possibly ask one of my other colleagues who I knew was close with the enrichment class teachers to approach them. Group Reflection This week was another smooth process in our group to complete our tasks. We met on Tuesday again and divided up the tasks that needed to be done, and we all completed them by Saturday so we could have time to review each others work. After a few small tweaks on Saturday/Sunday, we were good to go. I think our group has done a great job each week communicating and completing all of the assignments. This week, I was tasked with the Thinglink assignment. This was quite an interesting idea to use for classroom. While the tutorial was slightly out of date and not very useful, the website was not too hard to figure out. I was able to upload my main picture without much hassle, then I was able to add the tags in as well. Scoopit Thinglink Quiziz Quiz
Chapter 8 Reflection:
Select the five distance-learning technologies that you would prefer to use if you were teaching a distance-education or blended course. Reflect on your teaching style and your students’ learning styles and how each of the selected technologies would be received, depending on the students’ learning styles. (Two students can answer this question) 1. Zoom Zoom is the technology that I would use to hold virtual meetings. I have used Zoom in the majority of my Graduate level classes and it has worked fantastic in all of those classes. I think that the fact you can put students in groups and have them in their own room to work in groups is very useful. This could help students with ADHD as I would be mixing up instruction in the middle of class to help keep them from being too distracted. The students could also use zoom to call each other for group projects and such. 2. Google Classroom I would use google classroom to list all of my assignments and announcements for the students. The students would also be able to submit any assignments on google classroom as well. 3. Edpuzzle I would use Edpuzzle for supplementary instruction. I could use it to make additional videos about what we've been going over during our class time for the students to get additional practice. 4. Spiral I would use spiral for assignments and assessments. I could use spiral for small assignments for the students could work on, or I could use it for the formative or summative assessments. I would also use this some for my slides as it has an interactive slide options for the students to log into. 5. Google Drive/Docs/Slides/ etc I would also have the student utilize the rest of Google's online software. They could use drive to work with other students or to submit assignments. Project Reflection: This week, I worked on project 6, the Movie Story. I enjoyed working on this project, after looking through a few different video making software, I found one(that I thought was free) that would work. I was able to add in any pictures, text on the pictures, audio, video clips, and pretty much anything I needed to the video. Our students are learning about the colonization of America, so my video focused on the New England colonies. I only touched on the geography of the region, the economy of the region, and the religion. Overall, our group is still killing it for these projects. We had a video conference again on Tuesday to split up the duties for the week, and we all worked on our parts and finished them up in a timely manner. Project 6 - Movie Story Project 7 - Interactive Video Project 8 - Course Website Project 9 - Padlet |
AuthorMy name is Luke Smith. I am a middle school Math teacher and a High School Soccer coach. Blog Roll Ashleigh Bowen Melanie Bryan Kathryn Bubrig Mara Chitic-Holmes Terry Cullum Lauren Delaune Kelly Hudson Lindsey Jones Rachel Long Jana Milsap Jonathan Mooneyham Nicole Musselwhite Daleana Phillips Melissa Queen Derrick Routon Amelia Watson ArchivesCategories |