I have to admit, that at the beginning of this course, I had
my doubts. I was born in 1990, and 2 years later, the Internet was available to
consumers. I do not remember a time when there was not a computer in my
household. I’ve never really not been around technology, and I’ve always been
very logical and very good at figuring it out. When I heard that this course
was basically technology for educators, I admit that I sort of wrote it off as
a bunch of stuff I already knew with the SmartBoard thrown in. Now, I admit I
was wrong.
I felt like this course was a great model of
differentiation. I started the course confident with my abilities in
technology, sort of “Technologically Gifted” and I felt that the expectations
were proportional to our ability for most of the assignments, and that I was
able to use what I already knew to learn new things about technology in the
classroom. Nobody was penalized for their inexperience or held back by their
experience.
I think the project that will be the most useful is probably
the interactive whiteboard project. While I don’t know if I’ll ever be in a
classroom using an interactive whiteboard, I really appreciated the opportunity
to learn this technology hands on and get to use it. There were a few hassles
along the way, but in the end I felt I had created a very effective lesson and
presentation.
I also feel that my biggest change throughout this class was
likely my perspective of technology in the classroom. I’ve always thought that
technology has a place in the classroom, and now I feel even surer of that. I
do, however recognize an aspect that I had not thought of before. Yes, these
kids may come in already knowing how to use computers or iPads, or whatever
future technology awaits us, but our job isn’t to teach students how to use
technology. Rather, our job is to teach students how to use this technology to
learn. We can do this with many of the resources we learned about throughout
this course. I think I came in expecting to learn about technology, but really
I learned how to teach others about technology and using technology.
Looking back at my previous posts, I feel that my goal from
the beginning was to have a blog entry each week that would be on a subject
different from the other class blogs, but taking the perspective of the class.
In that sense I think I definitely succeeded. I felt that having that goal in
mind challenged me beyond the expectations of the assignment, and I learned a
lot of interesting things researching some of these topics!
I guess to close I’ll do what I do best, and write a sonnet
about it!
As this summer session draws to an end,
I reflect on what I’ve learned in this class.
I thought we’d learn how an email does send,
But we focused on much more complex tasks!
I thought myself a tech know-it-all,
But still this course really helped me to learn
From writing on a class Edmodo wall
To a Flat Classroom grant trying to earn