Before taking this class, I had very limited computer and technology skills. I had the basic internet skills needed to find material, but I didn’t know what blogs, bloglines, wikis, or podcasts were, and I didn’t have an idea of how to figure out how to use any of these skills. This course made me explore these technologies, and from this I was able to see ways to use these in my classes in the future. Before this class I had no desire to change the ways I have been teaching in my classroom the last couple of years. But this class opened my eyes to a whole bunch of activities that I could use that will use skills my students already use outside of school, skills that I feel will keep my students actively engaged in more of my lessons. From this course I have gained a desire to learn how to implement these new technologies into my classroom and use these technologies to get my students to use 21st century skills in my class.
The most valuable thing that I have taken from this course is I have realized that if I want to successfully teach my students 21st century skills I must be willing to put the time in to learn and develop new activities and techniques to teach these skills to my students. From this course I have realized that if I put a little extra time in, I can learn new skills to use to teach my students. These new skills I have learned from this course have given me many new ideas when it comes to activities for different lessons that I teach. For the first time in my teaching career I want to take time to develop new lessons to use in my classroom. From this course I have realized that I myself have to be a lifelong learner when it comes to teaching. I realized that I need to be open minded and willing to take chances and try new things, and I must try to keep up with technology, since all our students now and in the future, will be technology natives. I must continue to experiment with these new technologies to become more familiar with ways to use them in my classes.
My goals for the next two years are to transform my current classroom to one where I become more of a facilitator than a dictator. This will be an adjustment for myself. I have taught my class like I was taught myself, and I have not used enough problem solving and critical thinking with my students. I feel these are very important 21st century skills that I must implement into my classroom. This is the first goal that I have. My second goal is to use the new technologies that we have learned in this class in my classes. I feel that these new technologies could be used to do some interesting and fun activities with my students. I will try to use these new technologies to come up with new activities to add to lessons that I have already created. More importantly, I feel that by using these new activities in the classroom I will be accomplishing my first goal, since many of these activities deal with critical thinking. This course has motivated me to use the new skills and technology that we learned in my classes, and I have challenged myself to take the time necessary to develop these lessons for the use in my classes next year.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
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