I learned so much in this semester. This was such an interesting and fun course. With the growth of technology in education, I feel that every educator could benefit from this course. Throughout the course, I had three big take-aways. The first one was how important it is, as a teacher, to be educated in educational technology so you can develop lesson plans based around standards and technology. The second thing I learned as a teacher and as a student is how important it is to take time to reflect on the work and skills you have learned. The third thing I learned and was also a huge take-away is how to better navigate ALEX. When I can better navigate and understand technology tools, I can better teach my students how to utilize technology tools.
My absolute favorite assignments (yes, I had two) was the Video Creation and Digital Story assignment. I can usually talk to anyone about anything, but when the camera comes on I freeze. I was kind of impressed with how well the video turned out and how I was able to “decorate it up” with Fall leaves falling to separate my sections of the video. I ended up not being nervous at all when I got started with the video, which was a relief. I was shocked to find myself enjoying the Digital Story assignment, but it tied for one of my favorites. Once I was able to navigate the Anchor tool, I practiced a few times on my husband, then went to recording. I feel like I will be using this tool a lot in my classroom, whether it be reading directions to them for virtual days, reading books to them, giving them a word problem to solve, or highlighting our main learning topics for the week so they can listen to them with their parents over the weekend.
I can use the Video Creation at the end of each semester with my students. I think this will be a fun assignment for them. I will have them video themselves reading a book, working on a science or history project, working out a math problem, then closing the video with the main skills they learned each semester and why they think those skills are important for life. I plan to also use the Anchor tool for the students to start summarizing books they have read in my room. When they finish a book, they will need to record their voice summarizing the book. At the end of the year they should have a stream of different podcasts with different books. They will be able to go back and listen to them to reflect on each book they read.
Prior to taking this class there were very few technology tools I used. Now, after taking this class, I will for sure be using the Miro tool for meetings and the KAHOOT tool with my students (if I can figure out how to publicly share the KAHOOTS with them). We have so many ideas and plans during our meetings that everyone is writing down and it would be a more successful meeting if we had Miro pulled up on the smart board for everyone to put virtual sticky notes on there as we conduct the meeting. The students are going to love KAHOOT. I will use this tool for short assessments to monitor their retention of skills learned.
Personally, I would like to do more PD with the use of technology. I would like to incorporate it more into the classroom with my students, with data collection, and lesson plans. I want to understand the use of each technology tool to make sure it aligns with the ISTE standards. If I can teach the students how to successfully utilize different technology tools, while following the standards, they will become more successful in their present and future educational careers. It is easy to implement something you feel comfortable with, but it is a challenge to implement something new. All teachers should be allowed PD time to grow as education grows, and right now, education is growing and changing. Even the blogging every week in this class has been a huge help and resource to me as a teacher. I was able to read other’s complications and successes with the use of technology tools and from that, be able to choose which ones I would like to try.
Amy Harbuck 