As an educator, I have grown tremendously from this course. I have learned new technologies such as blogging, RSS readers, social bookmarking, and social networking techniques that I can bring into the classroom. This was possible because of all portions of this course, especially the Explore section where I was able to experience the different technologies firsthand. It was helpful to explore several examples of each technology, for example, both Delicious and Diigo as social bookmarking sites, so I could best decide what would benefit my teaching and my students the most. As stated in my Personal Growth Plan, one of my goals was to better utilize technology in the classroom to further differentiate my instruction. I wanted to make my lessons more interesting and motivating with the use of technology. What I have learned so far in this course, including how to apply the Internet to my teaching, will definitely enable me to do so. In my school, the Internet is at our fingertips so I will have the resources to utilize what I have learned. These technologies open up opportunities to meet the needs of visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile learners. Some will work better for certain lessons than others, but it was important to learn about various technologies so I can best decide what works best for which lessons.
The assignment that best exemplifies good teaching with technology is my SIG presentation. I believe that this assignment was beneficial as I collaborated with other teachers and also discovered a new technology to incorporate into my teaching. In my group, I learned how to better incorporate blogs into a classroom setting and how to embed student work, like videos and PowerPoints, onto the blogs. I believe that this is a great tool for teaching because it not only showcases student work and ideas, but allows for comments and collaboration, as well as the opportunity for parents to see their child’s work.
It would have been helpful to create more lessons and activities using different technologies that I can actually use in the classroom, but I know that I will use what I learned in this course to create technology-rich lessons in future courses and on my own. Perhaps if each SIG group created a lesson based on what they learned with their new technology, these lessons could be shared among the class. In this respect, the sharing of lessons using the NETS-S was helpful and provided a vast array of ideas that incorporate technology into the classroom.
I have made progress to my goal of learning new technologies that I can bring into my teaching, however I do not believe that this goal will ever be fully met. Furthermore, I plan to continue my professional development in technology and hope to always learn about different technologies that I can use and adapt to my own classroom. In our society, there will always be advanced versions of software and new medias coming out. I hope to keep up to date with the current technologies that will best meet my students’ needs.
Now after learning about new technologies that can be used in the classroom, my goal is to implement these through my teaching. I want to create technology-rich lessons that utilize what I have learned. I would like to start by utilizing blogs and RSS feeds into my teaching. I will also set up a Diigo page where my students can easily pull up resources and games to support their learning. In order to reach my new goals I will continue to take courses in the MAET program as well as utilize my Personal Learning Network that I began to create during this course. I must take the time to utilize my resources and teach my students how to use certain technologies, like blogs, before involving them in a particular assignment.
I look forward to starting the school year so that I can implement some of what I have learned and continue taking MAET courses to strengthen my knowledge in technology integration.
