For the first week of my graduate courses in Educational Technology I learned about the importance of tech literacy and how technology can be used to help aid student learning. One of the things I will use immediately in class came from our discussions on the tech standards. I feel more compelled now to utilize technology such as blogs and podcasts in a manner that will be used regularly by students so they understand the proper ways of using education technology to their greatest advantage.
To make this happen I will model the usage of blogs as well as podcasts. At the beginning of the school I will explain my intentions to students and will make our online activities mandatory for students to utilize. If they only have to volunteer to participate, they simply won't. I'll then demonstrate to students how podcasts can work by creating my own podcast about the expectations for the class. I'll also provide constructive criticism to the student participation in the activities. This will transition to regular usage of blogs to discuss content, answer questions, and have peer to peer interactions.
Challenges that I'm sure will face will be the lack of conviction students have to spend their time online doing school activities. It may not seem as fun, but we can discuss the alternatives to these online actions and they would be even less intriguing. It will also be a challenge to see how accessible it is for students to get on the blogs to post questions and discussions. Many schools have computer labs, but little time for students to use them. I don't know about the class time I'll have to devote to using computer labs as well.
As stated before, to overcome these challenges I'll show an enthusiasm to students that using blogs will significantly help students learn content and help other students work together to learn. This will be one of the times where students are encouraged to share with one another and learn. I'll make weekly discussions mandatory for students and I'll closely monitor and participate with the students so they see me actively engaged in to learning as well. As far as availability goes, I'll strive to provide students with time to go to the computer lab once a week. I can also work with other colleagues and administrators to make other times available before and after school.
Over the course of this week I studied various technologies available in education. One of the ones I knew the least about personally, but received lots of good feedback from other teachers in my area was DropBox. This software functions as an online storage box for all types of files that educators utilize in classroom instruction. These teachers mentioned how they used DropBox with one another in their department to share lesson plans, assignments, and to work on collaborative projects as well. They don't have to be anchored to the classroom computer since they have access to their files from any computer with internet capabilities. I had always used a flash drive which helped me function at school and at home, but to be able to easily collaborate with other teachers would also be invaluable to creating engaging lessons for students. I'll certainly keep this software in mind when I find a new teaching position and utilize it in the best way possible.
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