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.