Post some personal reflections on your experience in this course thus far. Think about....
* What have you found useful?
* Challenging?
* Frustrating?
* Rewarding?
* Any great "ah-ha" that you might have experienced
* Hopes for the remainder of the semester?
Remember to post a copy of your response on your personal blog
9 comments:
I have definitely found many things that we have learned in this class useful for my own personal benefit. For example, I have always wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, and although this is definitely a program that takes awhile to master, I'm glad that I at least caught a glimpse and was able to work on my own project. I won't go as far to say that the material we have been working on is challenging, because I am pretty computer literate and I think I pick up on things quickly. So while a program may be new to me, my prior knowledge about computers has allowed me to understand how to use these new programs or techniques fairly quickly.
I hope that during the second half of the semester we can touch upon some of the programs designed to meet the needs of students with special needs. I know that this information is not in the syllabus for the coming weeks, but it would be nice to discuss using SmartBoards or technology that serves as communication resources for students who have speech difficulties. Since I am studying to be a Special Education teacher, this material would be very beneficial to me. Overall, I believe that I have learned a lot in this class and hope that I can continue to benefit from it and put it to good use in my future role as a teacher.
I won't lie. This course has been and continues to be very challenging for me. I am disappointed that we don't yet have computers like they have on Star Trek. All you have to say is "Computer" and it recognizes your voice. There are no user names or passwords to remember. Then you tell the computer what to do and it does it. You don't have to remember a series of commands for each individual task.
Nevertheless, this course has been useful for me and I have picked up a number of lesson and activity ideas for the classroom. I was hoping to get some instruction and practice on the SmartBoard, because I believe they are becoming much more popular and common. The projects we are working on will definitely help me with ideas for differentiated instruction as well, once I have a class full of students.
I wasn't really sure how I was going to manage in this course because I have to admit that I am not the most knowledgable in technology. However, I have found that this course has introduced many new resources and programs that can be useful in my classroom. I particularly like the programs such as picnik as well as the digital photostory because I feel like students would really enjoy constructing and developing their own stories as a way to enhance their knowledge or practice the subject matter. I did struggl a little bit with photoshop just because there were so many steps and processes to go through but with some extra help I was better able to understand it.
I hope for the second half of the semester we are able to continue exploring good technology resources that will be useful in my classroom. I have to just think about how each resource can help students understand a foreign language and keep them interested in the language. I would also like to get some more practice using the smartboard and some other resources.
This class has been a great experience and I have definitely learned things that I can apply to my classroom. I found it extremely beneficial to have learned about photoshop, and programs similar to iMovie. Right now, I am really enjoying making my iMovie about my trip to Israel. Dan has been so helpful in showing me how to work iMovie and garageband. While these programs take time and effort to fully grasp, I am glad that this class has given me the opportunity to learn the basics. I have definitely found many things that we have learned in this class useful for my own personal benefit. For example, I have always wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, and although this is definitely a program that takes awhile to master, I'm glad that I at least caught a glimpse and was able to work on my own project. I won't go as far to say that the material we have been working on is challenging, because I am pretty computer literate and I think I pick up on things quickly. So while a program may be new to me, my prior knowledge about computers has allowed me to understand how to use these new programs or techniques fairly quickly.
Being that I am going to be a special needs teacher, I would find it very helpful to learn how to use a SmartBoard, and other assisstive technology that is available for special needs students. While I know that this was discussed previously at the beginning of the semester, I still wanted to make note of how helpful it would be for me to learn these different things. This class has been a lot of fun so far, and I have definitely learned some valuable skills for the future and I look forward to the next two months! :)
Sorry I am posting this so late on here - I had posted it to my personal blog last week and did not realize I was supposed to post it on the class blog! Happy Halloween!
This course thus far has been a great introduction to educational technology, I have gotten a chance to learn about some new technology tools – Wordle, Blogster and get actual experience with things I have heard of but never used much –blogging, wikis and Photostory. I like hearing and reading about everyone’s perspective depending on what their area of specialization is. I enjoyed learning Photoshop the most and am thinking of some more projects I can use it for. I also liked the digital story lesson and watching everyone’s different interpretation of the Robert Frost poem.
I think the most challenging part, aside from understanding copyright laws, is coming up with creative ideas for the projects. There have been moments when I have felt pretty creatively challenged, and that can be frustrating. Not being in the school system yet, and this being my first semester, I do not always really know how these technology tools would be applied, it is still a bit abstract for me. I do find it useful to always try to connect the technologies and lessons to content standards – to start thinking like a teacher. For the remainder of the semester, I am looking forward to learning about podcasting the most; this will be new for me. Also, perfecting the website and making things look the way I want takes more time than I would have thought; I want to spend time to make it JUST RIGHT.
At the beginning of the semester I was not a strong user of technology. Taking this class and doing the assignments I became a more confident user of technology. This class helped me to look at the education from creative perspective. So many things could be done in classroom to engage children and make their learning meaningful. Blogs allow to communicate not only with peers and teachers, but also to share their work with friends, families, and anyone, who has access to the Internet. Photoshop can be a help to make illustrations and hand outs for children more appealing by combining different images into one and adding texts. Non-linear PowerPoint is a great tool to create your own quizzes or presentations that can be culturally relevant and connected to their interests and needs. Programs to create podcasts and digital stories are excellent to encourage students to think creatively and develop problem solving skills. In this class I learned how to use technology to broaden children’s learning. At the same time, many more things are left to know.
The most important key that I found out in educational technology class is that technology is a facilitator of learning, not a substitute for live instruction. It is not enough to put a computer in front of student, a teacher needs to educate students to make full use of a computer which promotes learning. Educational technology is a great class for me to become a well-trained teacher and learn to provide students a qualitative education.
Originally I found this course extremely frustrating. As a non-tech-savvy teacher I was hesitant to incorporate the projects learned in this course to lessons in the classrooms. Midway through the course my attitude changed drastically. As I have seen the Smart Board technology incorporated into the classroom beginning in Kindergarten all the way into high school courses I have seen how interactive technology can be. As well as, how interested, intrigued and excited the students are to actually interact with the technology. That was the main reason my attitude towards incorporating technology into the classroom - student interest.
Podcasts have been particularly useful in creating. In Kindergarten and 1st grade, listening to stories are popular and an efficient way to learning letters, letter sounds, and recognizing text. Many classrooms still use book on tape and the tape players are Ancient. A perfect example is when a teacher wants to edit a book and leave parts out. For instance, learning about holidays around the world - leaving religious views surrounding these holidays are critical in a public school system. Creating a podcast allows you to record a text and purposely leave out specific parts that you do not want to children to hear.
This course has also opened my eyes to many different teacher resources which I will use in my classroom such as BrainPop, Wordle, and other teacher blogs. Just an awareness of these resources that we are exposed to in the course has been extremely helpful.
I have found many parts of this class very interesting and I believe they will prove to be useful in my future teaching. As a pretty tech savvy person I found most of the concepts pretty easy to pick up and felt adequate as navigating myself through using the different softwares and programs. Children in todays world grow up using all sorts of technologies at such early ages, that I think they will thrive from using technology in the classroom and will find things incredibly easy to pick up too. I especially found the non linear power points to be very interesting as I was proven wrong about knowing most things about power point. This was a new concept to me and I found that making a non linear power point would be a great ting to make in my class as a teacher one day. It could be great teaching way and a great way to make a 'quiz' of sorts for students.
As a future special education teacher, I think some pieces of the technologies we learned about could be used to help students be able to reach their creative, unique, and individualistic side. Technology often motivates students.
However, the population I hope to work with is often lower functioning so I dont think some of the programs like Photoshop will be applicable to them.
My reflections on the course so far are mostly positive. I’ve learned a great deal of new ways of bringing technology into the classroom. Such as: When my students studied a lesson on China, we used images from iPhoto that were digitally altered. The kids loved it and helped create them on the Smart Board, too. I think this was the most useful out of everything we have studied so far. Though, I am somewhat biased because I love photography and try to put it into my curriculum as much as possible! The students enjoy it and appreciate how helpful it is to our class, as a whole.
The most challenging is keeping up with the blogging. It’s rather tedious and since we talk about it in class, I find it hard to discipline myself to blog. Though, I am working on this. I haven’t found anything too frustrating, except for the navigation bar on the google website. It is hard to remember how to do things and I find I have to keep re-learning how to navigate that side bar.
It is incredibly rewarding to see the learning I achieve from MD 400 be transformed into my classroom. To see the delighted looks on my students faces when I teach them something new to me…and sometimes to them, as well. It is hard to keep up with them today, but they see I am learning right along with them and I think they respect me more for this. This is incredibly rewarding! I give and receive respect at my elementary school. My great “ah-ha” moment came later on as I really grew comfortable exploring the capabilities of the Google website. It was amazing to have it all suddenly click! There’s a lot to learn, but I am confident I can make another site for my portfolio. It will be even better because of the reflections I will have by then. Plus, I’ll know more of how to navigate through the site. Neat!
My hopes for the remainder of the semester is that I do a good job on the website. I want it to look clean and interesting. It’s been a struggle for me to create it and I have tried to show information in an enticing way, so the navigator would easily be able to go through the pages. My aim is that it will flow consistently, share similar qualities and meet the requirements of the rubric provided. I also hope to do a nice job with my blogs. I see they were kind of short in October, so I am trying to elaborate more by giving specific examples.
I’m really enjoying what I’m learning in MD 400!
Thanks,
Laurel
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