Reflecting On My New Technology Experience

Recently I have become more comfortable with incorporating technology into my classroom. This particular class has helped me to learn new programs that I can utilize with my students in order to enhance their learning. Before becoming involved in this class through Walden University, I had no knowledge of blogging, wikis, or podcasts. These were all a foreign language to me. Although I might have been overwhelmed at first, I am confident that my experience in creating and using these programs during this course will prove to be beneficial throughout my teaching career. I have begun thinking about how I would use each of these with my students. For example, I would love to have my students create a wiki in groups about various aspects of the Great Depression. For podcasting, I am looking forward to using this program to assist students as well as parents in learning our new challenging math curriculum. Many parents have questions about how to use new mathematical strategies that are being introduced. Currently, educators are teaching students how to multiply and divide much differently than in the past when their parents went to school. Therefore, parents need extra guidance in order to help their children at home. Providing an instructional podcast would be helpful to these parents. Lastly, I could use blogging for our science experiments in order to share results as well as predictions for upcoming activities. Children can respond to each other and contest hypothesis’ that are made.

During this course, I had the opportunity to interview several students regarding their use of technology. This was an eye-opening experience for me. I realized that much of my teaching style needs to be adjusted in order to be more effective in the classroom. Since my students are Digital Natives, they are used to having technology surrounding them and using it frequently. However, when they are in the classroom, they rarely use technology tools. I need to make their learning environment more conducive to their needs. In order to do this, I need to make my lessons more student-centered and allow students to investigate their own answers to their problems through means of collaboration and hands on activities. I can achieve this by implementing the new ideas learned from this class and my future courses through Walden.

My first goal in transforming my classroom into a more technology friendly environment is to implement a blogging website. Currently, our school is not allowed to incorporate this type of technology in the classroom. Therefore, this might require me to make a particular proposal to the administration regarding how I would use blogging effectively with my students. In this appeal, I would need to clearly convey how blogging can enhance learning in order for them to understand the importance of allowing me to begin this project. I would also need to create a letter to request permission from parents for the students to participate in this project.

My second goal in transforming my classroom is to become more proactive with technology and learn how to adjust my lessons to accommodate the technology resources that we possess in our school. I am always being pessimistic about our technology resources and complaining that we don’t have enough computers. However, I need to remember that many other schools are worse off than ours. I need to use the technology that we have to the fullest potential. To do this, I plan on revising my lessons to incorporate a technology lesson or activity each week or every other week. This will force me to appreciate what we have in our school as well as provide appropriate activities that will adhere to the needs of my children.