- What are some things that you have learned about effective teaching strategies when integrating technology?
The learning strategies session was very helpful in laying out instruction. Varying instructional strategies, using scaffolding, and collaboration.
- How did integrating web-based technologies help you think about and evaluate uses of technology
I found that working with technology is a love/hate relationship. Some types are easy to use and others can be frustrating and time consuming. By experiencing these technologies in this class, it saves me time investigating its use in my classes.
- How have you met your own personal goals for learning about technology integration?
I took this class to see if instructional technology was something I would want to pursue. I enjoyed this class a lot. I found that I would be interested in pursuing this as a masters degree. Also being a Technology Education teacher I wanted to expand on my knowledge of what types of technology is out there. I definitely learned some strategies, curriculum ideas and even some class ideas.
- Do you have any new goals? What are your plans for reaching your new goals and your long-term goals after this course is over?
I want to use what I have learned in my classroom. I also would like to take what I learned and share it with my department. We have a mixed department of myself, two business education teachers and a food a and a consumer science teachers. We try to incorporate technology in our classes. I would share this knowledge with my colleges in our PLCs. We have also been asked to incorporate the online requirement of the Michigan Merit Curriculum in our classes or design a class that students could take to meet this requirement.
I also want to try and incorporate a CMS for my computer applications class. The other computer applications teacher and I wanted to try this for awhile now. I went to a presentation at MACUL about a district that uses Moodle for all their courses. Students turned in and teachers corrected all assignments with in Moodle. The district had a laptop program where each student received a laptop their freshmen year and it followed them all four years. This also saved the district money in paper.
I would like to try a similar thing with my computer applications class. Since class takes place in a computer lab students would have a computer to turn in and receive back assignments. Advanced students could also go ahead and learn on their own. I could structure the class for differentiated learning.
My ideas will only change and expand as I take more classes. All in all, I want to be a digital native chief teaching and showing younger digital natives about using this technology in a useful and meaningful way.
