Final Reflection

I feel like I learned a lot in the class. I feel much more confident in my ability to learn new technologies and to figure out how to use them in my classroom. This will be extremely useful, because technology has become so important in society at large. Also, my students will be using it a lot and in order to engage my students in the class, I will need to use technology.
One way that I will use technology is by using Google Earth in my classroom. This will help the students to understand issues of geography and how it affects history. I also plan on using a website to keep in touch with my students and their parents. This will ensure that we're all on the same page. I also plan on using teaching my students about internet safety, so that they will know what to do to be safe online. This class really helped me to see how adaptable I need to be in my teaching. I need to be willing to try new things in order to reach my students and help them to learn.

Technology Video

The video that we watched in class about the growth of technology and how important it is becoming in the world really struck me. I know that we talk about technology a lot, but all of the figures and numbers really showed me just how influential it has become in our lives. I was especially struck by the fact that many of the jobs that we will be preparing our students for have not yet even been created. This showed me just how important it is that we integrate technology into our classrooms, because our students must learn how to be creative in their use of technology and comfortable with experimenting with it. It also showed me how much the upcoming generations will rely on technology, and because of this, I must be up on the latest stuff if I am to be able to reach them and interest them in what they are learning.
This means that I will need to integrated technology into my classroom as much as I can. I hope to use technology to present material to my students and get them into the lessons.

Internet Safety

I learned a lot about internet safety through my thirty minute study. I signed up with i-Safe and went through a couple of the tutorials. One thing that really struck me was how prevalent internet bullying is in schools and how important it is that we discuss this problem with our students. When we're on the internet, we don't really think about others' reactions to what we say or do as much as if our interactions with them are face to face. It is so easy to send an unkind message or even a message that is not meant to be unkind, but is misread.
As I was learning about internet safety, I was also struck by how important it is to teach young people about how they can be safe on the internet. They may not realize just how damaging and permanent something that they do, say or post on the internet can be. We need to teach them how to make wise decisions about using the internet to ensure their safety and the safety of others.
I know that internet safety is not something that I have thought about much in the past, but there are some things that I would like to change as a result of my study. First of all, I would like to remove some of my personal information off of the internet and choose to be more careful about what I put up there from now on. I also feel much more prepared and knowledgeable about phishing scams and how to avoid being caught up in something like that.
There were a number of things that I learned from the internet safety assignment and teaching opportunity. First of all, I learned just how much we often don't think about internet safety. I taught my fiance about internet safety and there were many things that we discussed that he said he had never heard before. One thing that he had never heard of was changing your birth day if you are going to put it on line. He had never thought to alter it by a couple of days in order to protect your personal information. He had also never heard about the free fire-walls that you can install on your computer to ensure that you don't accidentally go to any sites that are bad or have bad pop-ups on your screen. He had never heard of Canine or any of the other ones that I found out about and he thought that was a really good idea to use them.
Internet safety is important and it is something that we should be talking about in our families and our schools.

Innovative Instruction Competition Response

There were a ton of really interesting things that could be used in the classroom that I saw at the Innovative Instruction Competition.
One thing that I thought was really cool was the use of a blue-tooth keyboard and mouse in the classroom for teaching students how to write an essay. The teacher would pass around the blue-tooth mouse and keyboard and students would be able to take turns writing and editing different parts of an essay. This is a very visual and hands-on way to teaching writing to the students and helps them to learn about the writing and editing process.
Another use of technology that I thought was really interesting was the use of a wikispace, primary documents, and the creation of a video to study the American Revolution. I thought that I was really neat how the presenters sought to have the students develop their own opinions about the Revolution. I also really liked how the teacher had the students defend their positions--by creating movie explaining how they felt.
I also really liked the group that sought to use the asyncretous videos to perform a debate in their classroom. I liked this because I believe that it will give some students needed time to formulate an argument and responses to arguments that you don't get if you do an in class debate. This may also help students feel much more comfortable with the activity and sharing their real thoughts and feelings.