Reflection

Reflection

(from  http://www.clipartbest.com/students-in-classroom)

This semester has had a very influential impact because of the Introduction to Technology class. There has been a lot of information that I have learned in this class that I will use in my classroom, as a teacher, in years to come. Each chapter of the textbook had information that was useful to me. With this generation being so much more developed with the use of technology in social aspects, the informative, beneficial aspects would be easy to come by. I believe that if we use technology in the day to day lives or weekly lives of our students it will stimulate their learning. 

I used to think that I knew everything I needed to know about technology, but I was wrong. The semester started off with creating a blog. That in itself posed a problem when I was unable to gain access to my previous blog in the second week of trying to use it. It was a problem that I had to figure out and overcome all on my own, which I did. That stimulated my critical thinking skills. 

(from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oiov0L4blIw)

Continuing, another important aspect we learned about in this class was the creating a Website Evaluation Rubric, and evaluating an educational website for children. I believe that this was a great help for anyone who is determined to continue their education or career in the education field. As teachers, we are going to have to create rubrics on our own on a day to day basis. Not only would this help in further rubrics to come, but also, when looking over websites that we would want students to use we can use that rubric that was created as a determination on the important features it should have, or what we think it should have, because it's what we created. 

In addition to that, the WebQuest was a quest in itself for me. It was a tougher aspect to this course than I thought, but I was able to push through. Reading the comments on it from Mrs. Coleman, I was able to determine where I went wrong and how I am able to fix it. I believe that WebQuests are very educational resources that would benefit those who are using them. It would also get students to think outside of the box during their learning. 

Furthermore, one aspect that I did not quite understand was the collaboration aspect to this course. I, as well as many others, chose this online version of the course because of it's convenience factor. Yes, I do believe that in the future to come that a necessary part of the teaching field is to collaborate with other teachers in the same sector as you, but I don't believe in the ways the collaborations were assessed throughout this online course was the right way to go about it. I believe a collaborative lesson plan should be done on our own because if we choose to become teachers, most days the lesson plans will be focused on our ideas with no help from anyone else, unless it is something such as multiple classes getting together, that would be different.

To add on, I believe that all of the learning outcomes were met. The communication aspect was met because of all the blog posts. I believe that because of all the writing we had to endure during the semester, that it enhanced my writing to become better, which would help in my other courses as well. The critical thinking aspect was definitely met during the first couple weeks of the semester. This started with the Website Evaluation Rubric. It was one of the first assignments that I actually had to think long and hard about the way i worded things and had to explain my choices. The technology and informative management aspect was also completed. With all the different sources of information we had to include in our blog posts, and new technological features we had to include, I believe that my use of technology is now enhanced for the better in interesting additions I can add to make lessons, PowerPoints, Word Documents, and videos more interesting and effective. Adding on, the global socio-cultural responsibility was also met. I believe in the discussions we've done about students coming from different backgrounds would be a part of this aspect. Lastly, I do not see how the scientific and quantitative reasoning was met. This class did offer technology as an aspect but none of that had the inclusion of sciences.

This course was a very informative course and helpful class that I will continue to use in my life from here on out. Although I didn't always agree with the assignments that we had to do, overall it was a beneficial course that I would advise people to take, even if their intentions are not to teach. It would help everyone get a better grasp of technology and features that could be added to assignments to come.