Week 15 - Final Thoughts

Hello blog -

Here's some final thoughts on technology in the classroom.

When teaching, it's important to know what resources/materials are available to me. It will be important to familiarize myself with each type of technology that is available in my class. It's also important to know my students and what their "home life" is like (do they have access to technology @ home?). Once this information is gathered, I can use some of the teaching methods and projects that I observed and participated in throughout this semester. Acquiring things like a digital camera or headphones/digital audio players seem like worthwhile investments after seeing and imagining their uses for an elementary school classroom. Another consideration with technology is that it's really becoming a necessary skill to be able to use technology for many jobs. Typing skills, familiarity with computers and cell phones has become knowledge that we almost expect every child to have. There was an inspirational video that was shown during our April 30th student teacher placement meeting that encouraged teachers to tap into this tech obsession instead of fighting it (use text messaging to teach instead of trying to keep it out of classes). This will certainly be my goal, however, I recognize that there are also drawbacks to (mis)using technology. Discussing the pros/cons in class has left me with a pretty good understanding of what to look for and how to use various aspects of technology. All in all, it has been an awesome class and the act of creating and walking through the projects has been very educational for me, so it's easy to see how the students will feel should I ask them to do something similar.

Thanks for reading!