Technology integration and the digital word have been present in my classroom
for the past few years. This course has
confirmed my philosophy regarding technology integration. I am ending my course work with a better
understanding of the value of technology in teaching today’s student. I think of the digital immigrant, the teacher
and the digital native, the student frequently when planning each week. I feel confident that if I can incorporate
technology into my lessons, I am increasing student engagement and hopefully
their achievement.
Technology has helped me to facilitate lessons that reach the common
core standards. I found that the SMART
board can assist multiple learning styles as they practice their skills to
become proficient in a specific area such as counting and cardinality. The use of a counting activity that relate to
the student day-to-day activities gives
them an opportunity to relate their skills to their lives. These activities are accompanied by
integration of various digital tools.
The digital tools that we have shared in discussions and worked on in
our course work have been beneficial. I feel
that Animoto, voice threads and podcasts to name a few are easily accessible
tools that I can use with my students. They
have practical uses in the classroom in instruction and in assessment.
One area where my thinking has changed is the use of social media in my
own classroom. I found that social media
can be a wonderful resource for communicating with parents. This can be done by the teacher or by the
students facilitated by the teacher. I
was able to use Twitter in my WebQuest to communicate to parents the exciting
moments during our study of pumpkins. In
the future, I would like to use Twitter or an Edmodo page to inform parents of
the day-to-day happenings and the learning that happens in our classroom.
