Final thoughts on technology and tech class....

• How your view of instructional technology has or has not changed over the course of the semester.
• The quality and appropriateness of what you have learned/created this semester.
• Evaluation of your comfort moving forward with technology.

After learning about all the types of technology that are currently available, I can see how much teaching and learning have changed over the years. It is exciting that there is so much information available on line, and that students (and teachers) can benefit from other people's ideas by reading blogs, wikis, internet projects and more. As we have been learning in other classes, collaborative learning is an excellent way to engage students and motivate them to learn successfully. Not only can they collaborate with their classmates in the classroom, they can collaborate online with people they've never even met.  

We learned about a lot of different types of technology, sometimes it was hard to keep them straight and understand their differences and applications. Looking back at it all from the vantagepoint of the end of the session, I do see uses for everything we were shown, although I don't know that I will use everything in my classes. At least not in the immediate future. My favorites (and most likely to be used) are wikis, Smart presentations, shared documents and internet workshops. Those are all things I can and will use effectively in my math classrooms. Probably some of the "quiz" type applications also. There were times when I was extremely frustrated because the new information was coming at me very quickly and I couldn't keep up with it, so I got "lost" frequently during the classroom demonstrations and instruction. When I spent time afterwards, with help from the instructor, classmates or just on my own, things became clearer and I was able to use the new technologies. For me, and probably for the others also, I think a written explanation of the technology would have been extremely helpful. Starting with step by step instructions on how to set things up, how to edit them, save them, share them etc. In fact I would STILL like to have that for future reference!

I am relatively comfortable going forward with most of the technologies we've learned and used this term. I will continue to play with things to get better at using them and to learn about some of the capabilities I didn't have time to explore during this term. I will certainly be receptive to learning about and incorporating technology in my classroom. It will be interesting and educational for me and my students.

Week 6-homework for tech class "Other people's blogs..."

This week, I used Google Reader to read through some (most) of my TCPCG colleagues' blog posts. The Reader makes it very easy to find the posts and navigate through them. By far, it is a more efficient way to access them than going through a list of links and clicking on individual URLs.

I was struck by a few things as I read through all the posts. Well, I was struck by quite a number of things but I will only mention a couple.

First, there are so MANY websites and types of technology available  that it will take a long time to learn about all of them and figure out which ones work best in our own classrooms and teaching style. I am sure this is an ongoing evolving process, as our classes change each year, and our teaching skills develop, and new technologies appear on the scene. It is clear that today's classroom and the classrooms of the future will be very reliant on technology to enhance and supplement the curriculum. How fortunate that today's children are quite comfortable with technology and in many cases prefer it to personal interaction. The interactive technologies- wikis, internet projects, and many websites, for example,  will appear to be "all technology" while still fostering relationships and collaboration between students. They may work together more comfortably in this way than working together at a table in a classroom.

I also noticed that while we each had different websites that we noted as our "most likely to use" sites, there were a lot of votes for wikispaces, which is one of my favorites. It can be used in a variety of ways: to document or supplement material covered in class, as a communication tool between students, parents and teacher, as a forum for discussions among students, as a repository of completed projects, as a link to assignments posted on google docs, or links to websites for research and help, a place to view news and current events, and more.
It can incorporate many other sites and technologies- Vokis, calendars, projects, images, google documents, videos, screencasts, links to other websites. Kind of one-stop shopping!
It will be my go-to technology for quite a while I  think.

Sheri mentioned a website of internet etiquette (Netiquette) that she would be using and Lori expressed concern about the advisability of using internet websites that connect users with users in other countries to create on line communications, when using it as a resource for school children. Both of those comments serve as a reminder that we can appreciate and utilize these resources but we must remain vigilant and cognizant of inherent dangers and problems.

On a non-technological note, I really enjoyed reading other students' blogs about learning theories. Each person has a different interpretation of the theorists' views. It helps obtain a well-rounded understanding by listening to everyone else's ideas in addition to my own. (that would be "assimilation and accommodation" of ideas from "more knowledgeable others"...) Amazing how many ways there are to view theories and learning and how in the end, it all starts to connect and come together. Whew!