I'm Not A TECHspert

As I have mentioned before, I am not that great with technology; but I'm willing to learn. My supervising teacher, Mr. Taylor, has been introducing me to a lot of cool technologies to use in the classroom which has been very helpful in my Internship I!

1. In Dr. Scanlon's Wordle, I only knew a few of those tech tools. I believe that teaching is an evolving profession and teachers should be up to date with the latest technologies so their lesson can better relate to students; which is something I am working on. I know many of my high school teachers did not use technology very often in my classrooms (which I didn't really mind, but I'm sure a lot of students would have loved to use technology in class).

2. When I was looking at the Screencast-O-Matic, I was imagining how I could use this in classrooms today. Since this tech tool allows you to incorporate audio while looking at your computer screen, I feel like I could use this for class projects when I assign them. For instance, certain learners might feel more comfortable presenting a project through Screencast-O-Matic versus an oral presentation. In this way, teachers can make their lessons more differentiated and present students with choice in the classroom.

3.  Writing virtually is important for students and teachers because it allows different modes of learning. For visual learners, typing on a computer or manipulating images on a screen might help them process information in a more effective way than simply on paper. Also, kids love technology and it keeps them engaged and feels like a reward to them.

When I think about the risks of writing virtually, of course I have to consider the fact that it's harder to monitor students and keep them on task than if they were doing work on paper. Furthermore, virtual writing depends on technology of course, and technology sometimes fails (forcing you to improvise the lesson) and computer access is different from school to school.

In my lessons, I love tools such as Infographics, Prezi, visual mapping tools, memes (especially the memes), Goodreads and Make it Look Like a Newspaper. The more tech tools that you use in a classroom, the more students see their teacher as an authority figure that they can relate to and a classroom where they feel like they can learn/discover in creative and diverse ways. Mr. Taylor uses memes and the aforementioned methods and his students engage in his classroom and respect him a lot more than other teachers.

4. On the Top Learning Tools for 2016, I saw a Haiku Deck tool and I thought that would be very useful for a short poetry unit. Also, there is a new tool called "Buffer" which manages social media for a student which could solve the monitoring problem that I spoke about earlier. The tool "Reflector" also helps make computer/phone recordings easier to access in the classroom.

5.  When applying Bloom's Taxonomy to this blog post, the top of tier (Creating) is the ultimate goal for teachers when using technology. I really enjoyed Dr. Scanlon's pyramid graphic because it includes many tech tools that accompany each level. I found this graphic below to illustrate the fact that students can use simple tools such as Ninjawords  or Flickr and climb up the "technology proficiency ladder" to ultimately create a voicethread or something more complicated and unique for the classroom.

6. There were a lot of useful tech tools to try out. Next, I would like to experiment and learn Haiku Deck and Pow Toon because I'm highly proficient in PowerPoint and want to branch out a bit!