- Three main takeaways from this course: 1. Technology has advanced to the point that it is not only useful but nearly essential in the classroom. I think this year’s Coronavirus epidemic has proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. What happens when we have the next school closure or global pandemic? We will undoubtedly need technology then too. I think a lot of educators may have been woefully unprepared for this event, while still others were already using technology to enhance student learning. For those that were already incorporating technology the transition to distance learning was likely far easier. This makes it ever more important to have at least a basic understanding of technology use in the classroom, as well as in the distance learning situation. 2. This course has taught me that I have neglected the use of technology somewhat in my own teaching experience at the college level as an adjunct. I will need to take a good long look at how I teach and reevaluate my teaching philosophy to help overcome my reticence when it comes to using technology in the classroom. I honestly came into the class with a somewhat static view of technology use. I always thought more traditional methods were the best. I found my thinking to be incorrect. Technology has advanced greatly and, like it or not, we too must learn to advance and make use of it. 3. I will need to rely on technology in the classroom not just as a functional replacement for my own teaching, but as an integrated new form of teaching combined with tried and true “old fashioned” approaches. There is nothing about this class that has made me fear a changing of the times, a loss of my own involvement in the teaching process, or made me think that current technologies are confusing and hard to learn and therefore not worth my time to pursue and use. On the contrary, I have found the technologies we have used to be both exceedingly simple, of great potential use in my future classroom, and certainly not in any way a replacement for my current teaching mode, but rather as an enhancement. I admit that I struggled at times in this class, but I feel my main struggle was the feeling of insecurity based on not having really delved into technology use before. I felt somewhat that my pedagogical approaches were becoming at least a little anachronistic. But as I chose to engage more in the class, to “care” as I ask my students also to do, I began to see the efficacy of using technology to expand my teaching style, rather than merely replace it. More than anything, discovering how many students in grade school in my own life actually USE a lot of the technology that we worked with was very eye-opening. It gave me encouragement to see it being used by actual people that I know personally. It brought the experience home as I was seeing how the lessons were coming to life in my own experiences.
- My favorite assignment was probably the screencast assignment. I liked it because it was amazingly simple and yet I can see how awesomely effective it will be. I tested it on some friends and family before posting it and they loved it. I asked specific questions based on our lessons to gauge what they felt they learned from my screencast. I was impressed at how much they had to say and how the word “involvement” came up so much in our discussions about it. Just the simple ability to focus in on a screen, with live commentary, that you can display for everyone in a class evolves the audio/visual learning aspect of the classroom.
- I have already used things like YouTube, Powerpoint, a smart board, Ted Talks via YouTube, and a projector, but I plan on using assessment and learning tools like Socratic and Quizlet quite a bit more. I also want to incorporate more apps that facilitate more multimedia approaches that allow students to interact with the content in new and more meaningful ways. Of the different presentation software that we discussed I’m sure things like Presi or Canva will help in that regard. I definitely will want to have more lessons that utilize things like screencasting and videos that my students can watch to help enhance a particular lesson.
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