As I type my final paper, I think about what i wanted to get out of this class from the beginning. Going in i was confident with technology, but was afraid that it would just teach us to be dependent on technology and get rid of the basics. After all these weeks I can say i learned new ways and ideas i want to take into my future classroom to use on my students.
I loved all the new type of educational websites and games that are out there when you look for them. I knew something similar to clickers, but wasn’t really familiar with how it worked. I’m glad we learned about them because you can do so much with it to where it not only helps the students, but gives you feed back as the teacher. I also enjoyed the virtual field trip we did in class, realizing that not every student will be able to go on vacation to these places in real life make it such a neat idea. I never thought about it before,but you can do so many activities with it especially when you are bringing the topic to the kids. My group did the Biomes of the world, which was fun because we brought all of the biomes to students where they can learn about certain places they might not be able to visit.
Finally one of the things that I will take from this class is all of the different sources i can take and apply it to my classroom. The first thing i can take from it is making Microsoft Excel my best friend, especially when it comes to making a grade book. Its so organized and easy to pickup on once you get the hang of it.Also liked how we can do individual students standards recording on excel to show the students which areas they did great on and what they still need to practice on. The second type of technology I will take is the use of PowerPoint, I grew up on PowerPoint and realize how much you can do with it, especially in education. You can do anything from presentations, lesson plans, and activities such as the Jeopardy game that i created for my interactive lesson plan. The last thing I enjoyed was when we were looking up 10 sources for lesson plans, i was able to fine a website that i really enjoyed. https://www.planbook.com/#gradebook was the website that I really want to take with me and use in my classroom. I know it’s $12 a year, but what the website provides for the teacher is amazing.
To summarize everything I said, my attitude has changed on technology in the classroom and realize you can blend the basics with technology to create an more advanced classroom that makes the children reach their goals.
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