It was a great pleasure of mine to meet a new teacher. I have to be honest and say that I was very nervous about logging on to the class Wednesday night, and chatting in front of the class, learning about technology, and meeting a new teacher that I have never met. But it was one of the best online class experiences I have had. You made me feel very welcome, and conformable. I am looking forward to this semester. Your story about your life was truly inspiring to me. You are such a strong, determined person to endure the pain you went through and push through to become so successful in life. You are truly an inspiration to others, and should keep sharing your story.
I greatly enjoyed learning more about my classmates, and about their lives. I have been in several classes with three of the other students in this class, and I have learned more about them by reading these papers than I did within the classes we participated in together previously. It was interesting the different ways that each of us were lead to pursue a degree in education, and what inspired us the most. You never know what someone has been through to get where they are today, without reading their story. I also enjoyed reading their comments about my story, and how they could relate to it.
The first video showed me that everything in the future will be at the tip of your finger. You can slide your finger across a screen and it does everything for you, you have the whole world in your hands. I think this is convenient, but may come as a disadvantage to the younger generations. With all of the technology and means of communicating, such as texting, people are unable to communicate among one another. I think technology has to have a balance in schools and in homes. As my husband and I were out for dinner one night recently I noticed a family sitting near us and every single one of the were on some type of electronic device, and none of them were communicating with each other. So I believe that you have to balance your technology, and I am very grateful of it.
The new technology of the character Milo was truly amazing. It was very a little difficult to wrap my mind around and grasp the concept of what exactly was happening. I would enjoy getting to see this first hand. It is amazing what technology can accomplish in today's time.
During my reading my Chapter One of the textbook I learned many new things about technology in education and in the classroom. In the beginning of the chapter it was very interesting to read the changes the teacher, Anna, experienced with technology within 30 years of teaching. She started out with 2 computers in her own classroom and being very lucky to be chosen to have them, and doing fundraisers to purchase software for them, then in the year 2000 having 5 computers in her classroom and them being connected to the local server. I learned that the first educational technology was by radio instruction by pioneer W.W. Charters in 1948, and the first instructional technology was used by James Finn in 1963. A new technology development in 1994 was the World Wide Web. I noticed that the timeline located in chapter one helped me to place how technology developed starting with the first computer used for instruction dating up to the present day.
Located under the 'What We Have Learned from the Past' topic I read that teachers have to change to keep up. Many teachers want to keep using the same format, worksheets, and schedule they have used for years, but with children today being so technological advanced these children need something to always spark their interest and keep them challenged. Located under the 'Why Use Technology' topic I noticed that one of the reasons to use technology was to motivate students. I witnessed this first hand when teaching my lessons last semester during my observation hours. When I would use the Smart Board and allow students whom wanted to participate come to the board to write the correct answers, I would get a response from students you wouldn't have even known were in the classroom because they were not interested before the technology was brought into play.
I have also read in chapter one that technology is used for helping students that have special needs, I also witnessed this first hand last semester. There was a student whom was deaf in the classroom, along with a paraprofessional who went everywhere with him throughout the course of the day. She shared with me that she used a free program on the internet to teach herself sign language in order to be able to communicate with this student. The website was always pulled up on her computer during the day encase she needed to view it for the sign of a certain word. The students in the classroom were also allowed to use her computer in order to teach themselves how to communicate with this student. The last thing in the chapter that caught my attention was that there are many issues that come along with the use of technology in education, such as plagiarism and illegal download. But, we have to remember just as in life you have to take the good with the bad, and students should always know their boundaries when using technology.
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