As an un-certified novice teacher, I have leaps and bounds to grow and learn about the teaching profession. I've spent a year and a half teaching middle school math with a chalk board and no previous experience, just a love for math and the students. My access to technology was limited, and so was my knowledge. Being a digital native, I know a lot about social media and how to use various computer programs, however, properly utilizing Web 2.0 for students is another game. Through the course at SNHU I learned what to aim for, how to implement, and why technology integration is so important.
State standards are not fun to read nor are they inspiring but they are necessary to connect to lesson plans.
This was an issue I struggled with as a teacher with no education courses. I could create fun lessons, but was unsure which standards they related to or how. Our professor asked us to choose a state standard to work from as well as choose a lesson topic. I chose Coordinate Planes, it was not as difficult as I expected to locate the coordinate geometry standard for 5th grade mathematics. Through learning to harness technology such as WebQuests, I was able to turn the otherwise bland standard into a creative, inquiry-based online lesson. Technology liberated my thoughts about standards. What victory!
I have discovered numerous new websites, well new to me, as resources for educators. A few of them are Delicious, Animoto, Wordle, Curriki, Wikibooks, BrainPOP, and SchoolTube. It is easy to get lost online trying to find helpful sites to plan lessons and curriculum. These are great places to look and start when preparing a new lesson. Before I was aware of these great sites, I had limited online resources I knew about and wasn't completely convinced of the benefit the Web could have.
Another concept I am glad to have learned about was Universal Design. Having no knowledge or experience working with Special Education students or even students with wide ranging abilities, this was a challenge for me I was eager to wrestle with. One of my favorite education magazines has a very informative article entitled "Making the Best of Universal Design for Learning" in which the authors point out different learning styles, their existing barriers to learning, and their needs to be met. The article can be found here, and I highly suggest you read it if you also wonder how to teach to special needs. Although the article didn't talk much about technology, the knowledge foundation I had through the previous weeks in this course helped me to form the connections myself and come up with ways to apply learning to the various styles. It was eye opening and a resource I will refer too in the future.
Social media, something most of us use daily if not a few times weekly, was very exciting to see applied to our K-12 students. Of course they want to use social media in the classrooms! Even if they aren't allowed free reign on Facebook, students would relate to and enjoy more a teacher who can apply their kind of technology to a lesson. I loved learning about various social media sites in an educational light. I myself am an avid pinner on Pinterest, and it was difficult for me to dig myself out of the home decor and recipe sharing mindset to apply this site to a classroom. However, a discussion with another classmate, Erin Mower, exposed to me to the educational format the site can be utilized for. She shared with me her Pinterest for her students where there were boards for books they're read, animals they've researched, math tips and activities and more! I can't wait to use Pinterest in this way someday with my classroom!
Overall, this course convinced me of the overarching importance of technology in the classroom. It is the new way of learning, it is the way the future is moving, and for our students to be 21st century contributors, they must learn properly via Web 2.0. However, teachers must be educated in how to guide the students, there's a lot of information out there and it's easy to get lost. Courses like this one are the key to guiding teachers guide students.
