Friday, April 25, 2014

Final Blog Posting

                        To create a successful learning environment for our students takes many different things working in harmony.  Educators need to be able to pull all the factors together so that our students are able to use the many resources available to them.  Our face paced society and work ethic has created wonderful opportunities for students to create, to research and to apply their skills through technology.  Using blogs, podcasts, instant messaging, and wikis can help teachers transform the classroom into a forum that our students are familiar with. 
                         Taking the course Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society at Walden University has helped me develop my own technological skills as a professional teacher by infusing technology into my lessons. Using my interactive whiteboard in other ways besides a presentation tool has helped me inform my students that the internet and resources online can be used for educational purposes then just entertainment.  My knowledge of teaching and learning processes has deepened through multiple points of entry for student understanding of a particular subject through technology.  Creating many forums for our students to express and receive ideas can only help our students to become successful.  Giving our students dynamic ways to obtain the information we need builds different skills for them to develop.  Seeking information and distinguishing what is important to achieve our goals will help our students to build critical thinking skills.  I have always thought that teachers did all the teaching and that students only learned from the instruction by the teacher.  After taking this course, it is clear that resources can be made available to our students so that they can learn from their peers and other resources that already exist all over the internet.  I will continue to expand my knowledge of learning, teaching and leading with technology with the aim of increasing student achievement through acknowledging how my students receive their information and providing pathways to be successful.  I will try to keep reading and looking out for different resources that our students to access when they are in school or at home. 
                       I will strive to incorporate a new technology every year to see what works best for my students to be successful through the different ways they can learn the material.  Being able to take my students to a computer lab in school once a week can help them become familiar with the different resources to use and apply to their school work.  Scheduling time to use the computer lab with my school will give my students opportunities to build skills that will help them research and come up with their own solutions.  Another long-term goal is to setup and a live interactive classroom that will inform students of their progress as the school year carries on.  Using my schools online website can help me create accounts for all my students to view which assignments they have completed and what they still need to complete to become successful in the classroom. 

                       Providing students with multiple and varied opportunities for using technology tools and resources to support learning has changed from rarely to often because of the different ways I can reach out to my students through the various resources the internet provides us.  Model effective and appropriate technology use in my work environment by using appropriate tools in work processes, such as communication tools, grading software, and online resources for teaching and assessment went from rarely to often after this course because of the different ways we learned to reach out to our students through different forms of media.  We can use online resources to inform and apply their learning to games or other interactive software to motivate our students to learn.  

No comments:

Post a Comment