Final Blog Post Reflection

Over the last 10 weeks I have learned so much. I thought that I was very computer savvy, but quickly learned that I didn’t know much about what they offer. The biggest challenged that I faced and overcame was the Podcast. I honestly hated listening to my own voice and messed it up about 30 times before I finally said to myself, whatever this last one is, that what it is going to be. All in all it was easy to make but not on the top of my list. I really enjoyed Diigo, Animoto, and the Blog. All of these tools are completely different but unique in their own way. Diigo, I will continue to use during my masters program for other courses. Animoto was a ton of fun, super easy and I have shared it with a few friends so far. I can definitely see myself using a blog in my future classroom to communicate with students and parents.

I believe that I have now met the final course objectives which are, Demonstrate an understanding of safe, ethical, legal and moral practices related to digital information and technology, I believe that I met this by learning about the digital dossier, which still is stuck with me and I believe that it always will be. Having the internet at your fingertips to do whatever you want is a bit scary, but learning how to control what you use and what you show to others was beneficial.

The next course objective was, Illustrate through application how state and national standards are implemented within the curriculum (e.g., Common Core, NH Curriculum Frameworks, ISTE (NETS-Teacher/NETS-Student) and NH-ICT Literacy Standards for K-12 Students (Ed 306.42)), I believe that I met this while working on many assignments such as the WebQuest. I needed to make sure that ISTE and State Standards fit into my lesson plan. At first I was nervous about using the standards but then after reading them they were extremely flexible to put in many different categories. I found that there were many of the standards that I used on my webquest.

Another course objective was, Demonstrate an understanding of the use of assistive and adaptive technologies and other digital resources to personalize and differentiate learning activities for every student , when we learned about all the different websites we could use in our classrooms. I really liked that there were so many varieties of tools that are available to us as educators. Having such a variety of tools, helps with the way students learn best. If one tool works great for one student and not so good for another, there is movement to find a better tool that will fit. Having this is huge to me because no two students think, learn or act alike.

During the course, I had to do a lot of research on my own to find answers, Evaluate and reflect on emerging tools and trends by reviewing current research and professional literature, was definitely met while doing this. I enjoyed using Diigo to keep all the information that I found in one place. It was very helpful when I needed to put something away for the night and pick it back up the next day. I knew where all of the sites were located instead of trying to go through a google search.

The last course objective was, Turn theory into practice by completing 5 hours of related field experience, this was done by interviewing a former co-worker about how she uses technology in her classroom and what she thought about it. Asking the questions was easy, hearing how she explained what she did only gave me more of a perspective of how a classroom works. I enjoyed speaking with her and listening to the stories she told me about certain websites and projects. Her biggest piece of advice to me was to play around with the site before introducing it to the students.

Teachers should be integrating technology more in their lessons in the classroom. We are a growing country and the more that we teach our young children the more they will be able to teach the next generation. I think it is important to use technology not only in the classroom but the students should be allowed to use it at home for scholastic use and personal use. The more we can learn about it, the better we will be able to use it. Being able to adapt to new programs and information will only help.

Barriers would definitely be difficult but if you can find ways around them then students will thrive. I think that the biggest barriers are that schools don’t have enough computers, iPads or tablets at their fingertips. Having a limited amount of resources will make assignments more difficult.

Learning about different tools that I could use in my future classroom was quite interesting. I already knew about Prezi and have used that for many years during my undergrad, but will definitely be using that in my classroom to show a presentation on any given subject. For my webquest I used Story Board That and what I liked best was that it would be easy for students to use and was very user friendly. Using Padlet in a classroom to ask a question and have all the students answer it at one time seemed like it may be

I have started to create my own Personal Learning Network by searching for more sites that I can use as resources for myself. Having a PLN is definitely beneficial and I will continue to ask colleagues when I return to work next week if they have sources that they love to use, or people that they may follow on a blog.