Class and Blog Reflection

These are my thoughts of my Education in Technology class and blog activity at the end of the semester.

This semester has opened up my eyes to more unique uses of technology in the classroom. Schools buy technology for teachers but often times, nobody gives them much guidance on how to use it, and consequently, their use of technology in the classroom is uninspiring. After reading articles that suggest creative uses of technology, searching for websites that could be used in the classroom, and watching student lessons that used the SmartBoard in different ways, I now have an arsenal of different ways to utilize technology in my lessons. For example, I could do a virtual field trip as I did for my lesson, or I could have the students do matching games on the SmartBoard many as my peers demonstrated in their lessons. I was already comfortable with technology before this class, but I feel like I will be more creative with it now.

I have some experience with web design, and I plan on having a website when I am a teacher. I do not know if I will use this blog we created in class, or possibly design a website from scratch that allows me to have a more flexible format than a blog does, but making the blog has been a useful experience in any case. I especially got a lot of practice embedding content, something I had never done much of before. I now know that hidden under a button or the settings of almost every Google service is an embed option that will let you bring that content to your personal blog or website. Making the blog has also been a good experience because it showed me how useful it can be as a learning tool. When I am a teacher, I would like to use blogs as a means of having students create a portfolio of sorts throughout the semester where all of their work is preserved online, reviewed by peers, and available for their friends and family to look at.