Presentations are not my strongest to do but the more I give them, the better my communications' skills build. In the classroom, I can help those students who struggle with talking in front of people little by little. First with group discussions and classroom discussions then maybe I presentation for me and their parents and finally their classmates. Personally, I can attend professional development classes that can help me to become more comfortable with speaking in front of an audience. Since I will be in the education profession, my students are my audience and with simple presentations like the All About Me we did in the beginning, as time goes on, the students will warm up to me and their classmates.
I was exposed to Microsoft Office early in life. The two things I loved most were PowerPoint and Excel. Spreadsheets are so interesting because there is so much you can do with the information from creating comparisons with charts to setting up a grade book.
I had never heard of a podcast nor videocast until this class. Thank you. I especially enjoyed creating our videocast (which eventually simply became a podcast). They are FREE on iTunes and can be downloaded to your iTunes library and iPod for your convenience. From an educator's standpoint, these two resources are great for connecting students with other classrooms with iTunes U and with researchers and experts on a given topic. Listening to the podcasts that were created last semester was insightful because you learn that where you may naturally speak low, you have to speak up and BE HEARD! I know students will enjoy making these because once they find out that they will be available for the world to hear, the will automatically think "Superstar!" Students are a lot smarter than we give them credit for and they know that there are things going on in the education reform. They want to be heard and podcasts and videocasts are an excellent way to get their voices heard as well as creating a video and uploading it to YouTube.
I enjoyed the lesson on html tag modifiers. I wish I could have gotten a chance to either hear what it sounds like when the words are read back to someone or heard some feedback from the gentleman who would be checking for it. Since our classrooms are inclusive and I would love to incorporate technology as much as possible in my classroom, I know I will find this to come in handy for those students who are or who have parents who have a hearing impairment. Even in my personal life, I can use this in an email to someone who I know personally so they can "hear" what is on the page for them. Since we had to do this for every blog, I know I am literate when doing this.
Although we did not complete the assignment for Google Earth, the blog we did on Dr. Christie and the condensed summation of it we had in class was helpful and showed me how useful it could in a mathematics' classroom. As an educator, I can have my students find their home or their relatives' homes and calculate the distances from their homes to the store, their friends' home or a neighbor's home. In my personal life, I can use Google Earth to see the city I left behind and one day hope to return to to educate in our struggling public school system.
ALEX and ACCESS are links that I find useful as a future educator. ACCESS encourages what I think is very important in the classroom...TECHNOLOGY!!! it goes a step further by incorporating distance learning. I think it is vital that students are able to interact with other students all over the globe. ALEX is very resourceful in that it provides educators with links for lesson plans and standards that are given for all subjects including the infamous Drivers' Ed!
Skype was a nice assignment. As an educator, my students can converse with students all over the globe. They get to see and hear who they are speaking with simultaneously. It is FREE! In my personal life, Skype can replace the cell phone and telephone because I rather to "to someone" rather than talk "to something."
As expressed in our (Kennavia King who was against technology in the classroom, Ashley Lambert and Alexis Taylor) presentation, technology in the classroom is essential to the development and growth of our students. Technology in the workforce is becoming more and more prevalent and we must produce individuals who can survive in a world that is advancing more and more everyday. I plan to incorporate technology in my lessons so that students can understand that there is more to technology than the computer and more to the computer than games. This class has forced me to use the computer and its software in more ways than one and I know I will continue to use and learn more about what we have learned in class.
As a professional, I advocate for equity amongst our diverse group of students. I want to see our homosexual students not become victims of their classmates nor of themselves. I want to see an END to racism; not only between African Americans and European Americans but also with Muslims, Hispanics and anyone else not born in the United States. As a professional I advocate for an equity in school funding. I do not think a town should be able to keep their money for themselves and shut everyone else out. Why is it that only a certain group of people are able to get ahead while others suffer? As a professional, I believe it is our duties as educators to never stop learning and not be afraid to admit when we do not know!
The one thing I would have loved to learn about in class is how to shorten links. For example, for some of our blog assignments, their were sites we had to go to in order to watch a video or a podcast. Instead of seeing an entire address, the link would begin with http://is.gd/3WXrk for example. When we did our podcasts, we had to give the long and elaborate links but if we had learned how to do this shortened technique I think it would have been easier to capture.
The one thing we did cover that I am either ignorant about or simply do not understand the usefulness of it is Google Docs. Also, what exactly is Foliotek and how is it beneficial to me as a growing professional? All I know is that I submit my work to it and I could possibly fail if my work is not good enough for it.
The class did not necessarily excite me because the things we learned were not difficult to remember or execute. The more difficult something is the more excitement I get when I learn it. I did not find anything to be "intellectually challenging." Once it was explained how to do, I pretty much understood it. I was never bored with the class. I had classmates who kept things interesting and always had questions about something and the instructor gave us time to complete an assignment if we understood the lesson. Our time was well spent so there was no way to get bored in my opinion.
If I cold change anything, it would be the amount of blogs due and the due dates for those blogs should revised. In my class, someone realized that since we came to class on a Thursday and the other class came on a Tuesday or what ever date, they were given more time to complete their blogs than we were so the due dates were changed by a unanimous vote.
I am technologically literate with the information we have learned so far but taking into account all that is out there I do not believe I am up to speed like others. I would have to rank my literacy as Medium to Good. I will maintain my literacy by incorporating what I have learned into my daily life. I will improve it by learning as much as possible and keeping abreast on the advancements.
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