What I am taking away from reading chapter 1 and 2 is that society
is changing too fast for us educators to keep up with. Us educators grew up
with learning straight from our teachers mouths, now in the age of technology
there are online classes. Students are learning through podcasts, YouTube
videos, textbooks, and any other new technology. We went from looking for
information in a library for hours on end, to being able to find it in a matter
of minutes through the internet. The new motto is if anyone has a question just
Google it.
The everyday lives of students now are much different than when we were
students. Before it was more structured and cut and dry. Before it was only one
way or the highway. Now and days everything is so freely done and open. There’s
no script on how to teach or even what to really teach.
I think technology
makes it easier to break the ice because there are so many different formats.
Students can express themselves in blogs, tweets, status posts, any way
imaginable. This is where I want to make a difference as a teacher. I am going
to graduate school to become a literacy specialist so I am learning how truly
important reading and writing is to a student and their personal growth, let
alone as a learner. Students have to be able to open up and express themselves
freely and what I am learned is that it is much easier to write things down
than to say them.
Questions:
1. How can I make the learning environment as
comfortable as possible?
2. How can I integrate technology without it
being overwhelming?
3. How can I allow my students to be in a
technology rich environment without them forgetting the roots of it? Ex)
writing by hand, a solid textbook.
Incorporating technology seems overwhelming to me as well. There are so many ways things can go wrong. The internet connection is lost, some piece of equipment breaks, the server for a website is down. There are a lot of factors that are out of our control, as educators, when it comes to incorporating technology. I think the best way to combat this is to have a back up plan and be prepared. Things can and probably will go wrong at some point. Have a back up option if something goes wrong with the technology. It'd also probably be easier if you ease your way into using tech in the classroom. I know I don't like diving into things full on. I like to start out slow and build my way towards larger projects. I might use technology sparingly until I feel I am comfortable and am able to manage it's use in a large classroom setting.
ReplyDeleteI like how you compare how we learned with how children are learning today. I laugh, because at one point in our lives we have all heard from our parents "I walked three miles in the snow to school up hill," and other stories about how different it was. All this time we just assumed they were being dramatic, but now seeing the changes of when we were kids to now, we can see how truthful a statement like that was. Our parents thought we had it easy, and now we think our students have it easy. Like you said these kids can Google anything, and have no idea what it was like to spend hours in a library flipping actual pages of a book. Technology is overwhelming, but I think nothing is as overwhelming as change and learning to accept change and roll with it.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I thought of while reading your post was school blocks. Things like youtube and twitter (and even blogger) are great things to use in the classroom, unfortunately many schools block them. These are also sites that can be misused and a problem if not carefully attended too. While working with older students I would love to work with twitter. For my sisters 9th grade history final project they had to make a facebook page for someone they studied. I loved this idea and would like to do something like this one day!
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