Class Reflection

            This class has both opened my eyes to many new things and also reaffirmed things that I had already learned about technology in school. Many of the things taught in this class are things that our school district is trying to implement. The schools all realize that these students are wired differently and need additional technical support to understand their lessons. They cannot just sit quietly and listen to a teacher lecture throughout the course of the school day. Implementing technology in the past has been accomplished by adding some lower tech items; replacing chalk boards with white boards chalk with dry erase markers. Then the changes started to be more advanced, putting computers in the classroom, adding interactive white boards and Apple iPads. This course also had the wisdom to note that not only must the resources change, by adding all the hardware, but the teachers must change and create ways to use this new technology to enhance student learning. Technology doesn’t teach students, teachers do. If we want to reach the students of today, we need to learn how to work with the technology. Just having an interactive board doesn’t mean anything unless the teacher finds innovative ways to use it to engage the students. This course has also come with a book that will be a great resource for years to come in finding other areas of help. It has links to sites that allow teachers to teach their students how to blog, where to find additional resources besides the traditional Google search. When taking classes in the past, many students, even adults don’t want to purchase the textbook, or sell it back immediately after class is over. But this book has some great links that I discovered that I will continue to look into long after the class is over.

           The uses for what has been taught in this class are almost endless. I have just started at a new school this year whose focus is innovation and technology. Taking this class, I feel I have quite a few more ways to deliver this type of lesson to my students. It talks about using some software that I am familiar with; Kidspiration software for understanding words and numbers, and audio recording programs like Audacity.  There were also so many more links to software and services that I had never heard of before. It will be great to be able to break the molds on the traditional diorama this year and make a movie or a podcast instead! It may level the playing field if all students are introduced to the ways to produce these new reports. Maybe even having the students complete all their work at school. It is always obvious when some students get too much help from their parents on one of these “old school” projects. It will also allow teachers to save some of the students’ things digitally on DVDs and give them to the parents. In years to come when all the paper and drawings have faded, it might be fun to watch your child discuss his assignment or watch a movie that they have developed. Technology is a difficult thing to keep up with, just when you think you know it all, it changes. Things are changing so quickly, that it is hard to keep up. Teachers need to keep an open mind when it comes to implementing things that work in the classroom Taking classes like this one can help get teachers aware of all the inexpensive technology at their fingertips. Some of the items may be expensive, computers and projectors and the hard ware; but once installed it is easy to find inexpensive ways to keep these items new and fresh for our students. Technology is here to stay and taking classes like this one, online as well as in person will help keep our teachers a step ahead of the curve. Letting the students become the new creative forces in their education.