Personal Reflection

Technology is a fun new toy that can be both overused and overwhelming. I learned that I need to have a purpose for integrating the technology and not use it to just use it. I also don’t have to be an expert in the subject. Although I do need to have a good foundation, I can allow the students to explore on their own and even teach me. This not only takes the load off my shoulders but also gets the student’s adapting and thinking outside the box. 

However, just like I get overwhelmed, I need to realize that my students may get overwhelmed with technology. It is important to give them little bits at a time so that they don’t get frustrated and give up on the technology. The best way to work on this is to model the technology first, and then let them create something of their own. It’s also a great way to get them hooked! They see it and want to do it too.

Lastly, I learned that as a teacher it’s really important to integrate lessons of cyber bullying whenever using technology. This is a good way to teach the students what it is and to stop them from doing it right from the get go. 

Taking an online course really helped me think about and evaluate uses of technology. Every lesson in and of itself was an example of what one can do with technology. Then every lab really demonstrated how easy it was to explore and create on the Internet without too much direct instruction. I saw that I could create a lab and have my students follow it and then I wouldn’t need to model or demo each individual step. Furthermore, with each project we had to complete I was really able to see the possibilities and the future of that technology in my classroom. 

A lot of my thinking shifted from individual work to collaborative work. The SIG project demonstrated the most with each individual step. I dived head first into the wonders of online book marking and doing so as a group. I was able to see how easy, effective, and efficient it was to create a Google document as a group. All of us were able to type in the document at the same time, while having a discussion on the side and talking about what we needed to accomplish. It opened up my eyes to collaboration, not only between students, but also between cultures. I really want to integrate a collaboration project with another Spanish-speaking classroom that is learning English. 

Finally our group was able to collaborate on the presentation portion of Google docs, and all of us were able to see the wonders of everyone else’s projects. I’m definitely sold on précis now and I only saw it in the presentation, haven’t even tried it myself. Needless to say, the integration of the Internet really got me thinking about everything I can do with technology and I can’t wait to learn more!

Of all of the assignments that I turned in, I really feel that the SIG presentation really exemplifies good teaching with technology. First of all our SIG was created on Google docs so it utilized new technology that allowed for collaboration and easy sharing. The PowerPoint itself was engaging and fun and was rich with links and youtube videos that played right in the presentation. However, the PowerPoint, while fun, was also professional and informative. I could imagine students paying attention and wanting to see what they were going to learn next, which is exactly what you want as a teacher.

Through this class and the labs I definitely reached my goal of exploring a wide variety of technologies. All of the technologies that we talked about were new to me and really gave me an appreciation for how much I’ve been missing out on (technology-wise). Through my own explorations I definitely ran across areas where I had difficulty, such as trying to figure out how to share Google reader or the fact that netvibes has a private and a public page and everything needs to be transferred to the public page, the information isn’t automatically in both. Therefore if I want my students to share their RSS reader with me, they need to put all of the information in the public page first. 

However, I wasn’t able to introduce the technologies into my classroom already mainly because I didn’t quite anticipate the time that it would take to complete the class, being that it is accelerated to complete in 8 weeks, and to maintain my classroom in my first year of teaching. In other words my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I wasn’t able to fit all of that in. I do wish that there was more of a break between the classes because I am very excited about everything that I am learning, but at the moment I don’t have time to include extensive projects and that’s exactly the vision that I have with the technology that I want to implement. 

I guess this leads me to one of my new short-term goals and that is to take something small that I’ve learned and implement it, such as the digital storytelling. I don’t have to get extravagant right away, though the bigger goals of using an RSS reader for current events in Latin American countries and sharing stories with a Spanish speaking school are still my main long-term goals. 

As stated in my Personal Technology Plan, I will also continue to explore the technologies that I have already touched on, especially the Web 2.0 tools. I will learn more about technology with each new class in the educational technology certificate program. I have already begun collaborating with my mentor teacher on different ways of using the technology and what technology we have in the district. I will take this summer to really try to figure out the different ways that I can incorporate everything that I will have learned so far.

Lastly I do feel that I made sure to ask questions no matter what, though I don’t think I had as many as I expected to have. Most likely I simply didn’t know what additional questions to ask, but now I have the resources to get help through Twitter and MACUL space even though the class is ending. 

In short, I have grown a lot through the labs and the projects in this class and am super psyched to take everything into my classroom and revolutionize the way that my students have been learning Spanish!