For the last six weeks I have been taking an online class through GVSU. This was an Ed. Tech class; very fun. Over the course of these past six weeks I have learned many new things, and revisited some things that I already knew about technology and how to utilize it in the classroom.
One of the main things that I started in this class and would like to continue to use more often is this blog site. Before the class I had often fiddled with the idea of starting a blog; however, this reason or that came up and I never did. Now that I have started it though, I'd like to work with a little bit and decide what I'm going to do with it. I guess I need to figure out a direction that I'd like to take it in. That being said, the blog is one of the things that I will continue to use, that was new to me (meaning I had not personally set one up).
I also enjoyed finding the technology plan for my school/district. While it was not available on the school website, it was located in the main office, I just had to ask the right person! ;) All in all, I was happy we had one, but I was disappoint with the amount of “meat” that the document contained. To me, it seemed very weak, and more of something that was put together simply for the fact that it needed to be done, not because it was something that they wanted to do or saw a purpose for doing. Now that I have my own copy of it, as we move forward with technology at our school, I am going to add notes to the document, and ask that it be updated at least once a year. I'm hoping that the document will eventually become a true reflection of who we are as a school and our use of technology within it.
The project experience was helpful for me as well because I've never developed a web quest before. This was a daunting task for me to complete, and it required a lot of well thought out and appropriate tasks for the students to complete. To create a lesson that is completed entirely on line requires the designer to look at it from many different views. The normal view of a lesson is that of the teacher or the student perspective. When planning this web quest, I had to think about the outside viewer, the community, the internet (did I find the best fits that I could). It was interesting to plan it. I won't know until I run through it with a class of students in the fall if I like how I have it designed or not.
The future of technology use in my classroom is only going to increase as time goes on. Not only are more and more classroom based practices available through some type of technology now, but also the students are more and more experienced with many different types. I am hoping that students will learn to use iPads this next school year. I also hope that by doing that they also learn how to navigate the two different interfaces between a Mac and a PC. I also hope that over the course of time students become familiar with other types of writing software (other than Microsoft Word), and that they can move easily from one to the other. I also hope that students continue to challenge themselves and me to be on the cutting edge of what's out there to learn and use to improve their education, and possible that of others as well.
I hope that by being a member of MACUL that I am able to keep up with some of the things that are going on in the classrooms with new technologies that are available. The main conference that they offer every year is something that I plan to attend for the foreseeable future. However, I also plan to take advantage of many of the other smaller conferences and forums that they sponsor. I also plan on using my Twitter account to keep up to date, and utilize more as a professional learning network, than as a social site. In the future I plan on completing some more training/classes that are geared towards technology. I would like to take “21 Things for 21st Century Educators” training when it starts again this fall. There are many possibilities out there to keep up with what is going on in education, it'll be up to me to apply it in my classroom.
