Reflection #16: My Beliefs

I have developed many beliefs about integrating technology into the classroom. I feel that this class was a good class to help me decide where I stand with technology. I love technology! I want my students to love technology! I love learning new things about technology. I have learned to be patient with technology. In the past I have struggled with patience and technology! I am patient with everything else but technology and this class has helped me to do better with that struggle. I am really excited to include technology in my future classroom. With field experience we used some type of technology with every lesson whether it was just a projector or if it was the Smart Board or the ELMO. I really want to be able to teach my students about technology. After reading the New WWW article for this assignment I want to create a ClassAct Portal for my students, even though I don't have any right now. I want to have a good influence of technology on my students. The future generations that I am going to be teaching are going to know much more about technology than I do. If we don't do something about how much they know and use that knowledge to engage them in the classroom then we won't get through to them and they wont become the students we all know they can be. I look forward to using the skills that my students have acquired without even realizing they have done it to the best of my teaching ability! I want to have a positive influence on my students! I want them to love technology as much as I do. We as teachers need to do all we can do to make our students learn all they can, if that means letting them use their technological abilities in the classroom, why not do it? I know I will!

Reflection #15: Lessons Learned

I really enjoyed reading these articles and watching these videos! I learned a ton of valuable information from each one of them that i will try to take to heart! I really enjoyed the millennial generation video. I feel that the predictions about technology that the students came up with are pretty accurate. I also enjoyed the New WWW article. I had never realized that our world was like that. One part that I especially liked in it was the section A Better Approach for Education and A Strategy for All Teachers in All Schools. I feel that we as teachers need to develop a ClassAct Portal. I love that this article tells/shows you how to build a ClassAct Portal. I also really enjoyed reading and learning about the shorthand that we use now days and ones that the author feels we should use. I didn't like the article of PowerPoints that talks about Tools for Change. I couldn't follow it and wasn't sure what it was trying to say. If i knew what it was saying or talking about I might like it a lot better and understand it a lot more. With the High Tech Learning article i wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it. I feel there needs to be more instruction on what to do to understand what its trying to say or what you're trying to have us learn from this website. I really liked the article about why we should integrate technology into the curriculum. I liked the part in this that said "Technology also changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple means." I learned many lessons and gained some beliefs about what i think about technology in the classroom. This class was very helpful in teaching me about technology and what it means to me!

Reflection #14: Strengths and Weaknesses

My scores from the UNI survey were, starting with the lowest and the one in need to work on most, not being aware of any adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs. I rated it at pre-novice. I was novice in multiple areas including: demonstrating awareness of uses of computers and computing technology in business, industry, and society; using audio/visual resources (audiotapes, videos or slides) to access information and analyze the authority, accuracy, currency, and relevance; using video conferencing such as the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) to communicate with others; using databases to collect, organize, and analyze data and produce meaningful reports to aid in problem solving; using graphic organizer software to display information graphically for brainstorming or decision-making sessions; and using instructional software to support student learning and professional review sources to match software to the needs of learners in the special education or regular classroom. The rest of the survey questions i was an apprentice. I didn't feel like i was able to put practitioner or expert because i haven't designed authentic learning activities for my students or reflected on and made educated decisions in determining the effectiveness of those activities. I feel like I didn't have many strengths with this survey. I feel like i could improve in everything that this survey described. With the NET standards I feel that my weaknesses are that i don't use technology to enhance productivity and professional practice. I also feel that i don't understand the social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology in PK-12 schools. My strengths with the NET standards would have to include demonstrating a sound understanding of technology operations and concepts as well as  planning and designing effective learning environments and experiences supported by technology. I feel that my strongest point would have to be to implement curriculum plans that include methods and strategies for applying technology to maximize student learning. The goals i want to accomplish as a beginning teacher would have to include becoming aware and using (if applicable) of any adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs. I want to have my classroom one that has all students. If I have students with special needs I want to have all the options and things to make their learning experience one they will never forget and make the most of! This website, http://www.rehabtool.com/at.html , has multiple options for assistive technology and learning about the different products and things related to special needs and adaptive assistive devices. My second goal i want to accomplish as a beginning teacher is to understand the. I want to be able to teach technology and things but I don't want to be scared that I will run into ethical or legal problems. I want to understand all that I need to so i won't have to worry! This website and video has a lot on what i want to learn for this goal! http://www.truth-it.net/ethical_issues_in_education.html  

Reflection #13: Digital Story Reflection

At Vineyard Elementary School there were a lot of students who were from low income families. We had a lot of students who moved in and out frequently. There were 33 students in the class that we taught and our cooperating teacher was Mr. Zac Eagar. Our relationship with Mr. Eagar was really good. He debriefed with us after every lesson and sincerely wanted us to succeed. He gave us goals after every lesson to do better at that thing for the next day. He really liked our digital story. He felt that the students enjoyed it as well and that it was a good change to what they were used to. He felt that the lesson, Utah’s Geography, went really well also. He thought that the students were thoroughly interested in learning about the geography of Utah. The training session went awesome. He is very technology skilled and would succeed easily in doing a digital story of his own for whatever topic he chose. He was very excited to see our digital story and to create one of his own. We feel like the service-learning experience was very good. We felt that we contributed to the community in a good way while developing a better understanding of Utah’s geography. We feel like we know much more about the geography than we did before the lesson. We think that Mr. Eagar gained a better understanding that the kids need a greater variety of lessons taught. The students get used to the same way a teacher teaches and they get bored. As a teacher you need to be full of ideas to keep the students engaged. We gained a lot of knowledge of content and what to do for classroom management. Mr. Eagar told us, “You have mastered the science of teaching, now you need to master the art of teaching.” This field experience was definitely worth it. We learned so much about teaching and what it means to be a teacher. We will take all that we learned and use it in our future classrooms.