A New View

I now have a new view of how I can educate my students. As I am finishing my course on integrating technology into a classroom, I am more informed now than I was eight weeks ago on how I could use technology in a classroom. I now have tools that can help me in my pursuit to integrate technology into the classroom along with some goals to help me use technology more in my classroom. By integrating more technology into the classroom it will allow for my students and me to grow.

Before I took this course I had never used a blog, wikis, or a podcast. Now that the class is over my level of knowledge about different technology has increased. I have learned how I can set up these different tools and use them as a way for my students to use technology in my classroom. I can also use these in my personal life to communicate with others and professional life to share ideas and learn from other educators.

To help continue to expand my knowledge of technology I plan on using more technology daily. The more information that I can learn from people who are already using technology every day the easier I will be able to apply the technology to what I am working on in my classroom. By doing this I will be able to integrate more and more technology into my lessons. By finding the best way to apply the different technology to the lessons the better I can help students achieve their goals.

One long term goal that I have is to have my students answer questions and discuss the questions using a blog. Another goal of mine is to let the students use computers more in my classroom or lab. I want to find different projects that my students can do using technology. To accomplish this I need to change my teaching style, instead of talking to the student the whole period, allow the students to interact with each other. Then I can use the discussions in class as a way to lead into the students continuing their discussion on a class blog. I am also going to allow the student to come to my room from study hall to use the computers in my room. This way the students can have access to the technology when they are not in my class.

I know that change is not easy. Many times if it does not work the first time I will go back to what I have always done in the past. I plan on being more patient and to not give up. Instead of giving up I will continue to adapt my new knowledge and new ideas until it is effectively working to help the students.

Students using Technology at School and Home

I interview three high school students on the amount of technology they use at home and at school. I asked them the different kinds of technology they use and how long they use technology in a day. I also asked if it would be benificial to use the technology they use at home at school. The interview can be found at http://podcastmachine.com/podcasts/3732/episodes/16633.