The most significant knowledge that I am taking away from this class is how to implement technology into my lessons in small, interesting ways without overwhelming myself. As many of our assigned readings pointed out, many teachers who struggle with the notion of using technology in their lessons have preconceived notions that technology isn't worthwhile or that it takes too much time.
In this class, I have found that technology can be simple and efficient, too. For example, I really enjoyed learning more about how to use Photo Story for educational purposes. I went to a workshop on this topic last year, but we just uploaded personal photos and added captions. I didn't see all of the educational possibilities until this class. Also, I enjoyed the brief introductions to new technology resources that Dr. Hur presented at the beginning of each class. Teaching us how to access our favorite sources, like subscribing to podcasts or bookmarking our favorite news sites, was beneficial on an educational level as well as a personal level. I liked the use of videos and online articles as class starters. I believe that by using technology to appeal to students' interests and by offering it in simple, digestable chunks that I can encourage them to find how it suits their needs and wants. This method also keeps me stress-free in that I am engaging my students in something useful that is also easy to create and present.
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I agree that putting the technology into an educational format is incredibly useful. I've been to several tech workshops myself, and the focus is, like you said, seldom focused on applicable educational uses.
ReplyDeleteI also like how we learned how to implement technology in small ways into our classroom. I think this could be useful when talking with veteran teachers who shy away from technology because of the overwhelming factor it can have on them.
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