Scenario

I am very excited to become an educator soon! I have strong attributes as an educator, but like all teachers, I also have challenges in the classroom. I see my future challenges as being a young teacher in a classroom with older students, and trying to find the correct boundaries and classroom management in those situations. A challenge I also see myself having is disciplining students when it is necessary. I have not been heavily involved, as a teacher, in those type of classroom situations yet, so it will be a challenge to find my own way of dealing with a difficult situation like that. However, I have many attributes as an educator. I enjoy using technology, and plan to incorporate it into my teaching to help students learn in a variety of ways. I also am very passionate about what I will be teaching, so I see that as a positive attribute as well.

In three to five years I see myself as an educator in a classroom. I would love to be teaching both English and Journalism, but if not, I would be happy to just teach English as well. I want to be an involved teacher, so I could see myself helping students oversee the school newspaper or book club. I would enjoy connecting with my students outside of the daily classroom, and get to know them better. I want to be able to can adapt my lessons so they really reach my students on a personal level, and I think getting to know them is the best way to do that. I plan to get to this point in my career by staying up-to-date with the different technology that students can use in the classroom, and by attending professional meetings to learn these different technologies and how to incorporate them into the classroom.

 I think technology really impacts student learning. I believe that using technology in the classroom is the future of education, and using it will engage the students more. Technology can be used simply to get students attention at the beginning of class, but you can also use it in many other ways. Showing videos or pictures in class will help students who are visual or auditory learners. Having students create their own projects using laptops or iPads can help the students who are tactile learners. Also, for projects, students can make their own videos, and that can engage students who are kinesthetic learners. Technology is great, because it can easily address all different types of learning needs. Also, students who have special needs can use technology as a great resource. Computers can now read text to students, and there are a lot of features on computers you can use to enhance learning material for students. For a student who has problems following along with a PowerPoint or Prezi in class, you can share the document with them, and then they can follow along with it in class. Students can now download a lot of free electronic versions of books, so this would be helpful in an English classroom where a student has a hard time following along. They can let the computer read it to them, or they can enlarge or highlight the material the help the follow along better. There is so much you can do to help a multitude of students with technology.

I would integrate a lot of technology into my classroom in a simple manner. I would use Prezi for classroom presentations. I would also use Voicethread, Animoto, Toondoo, Story Bird and Glogster for students to use to present information. I would also use Delicious to continue my collection of resources in the classroom. This technology has had a huge impact on my education at K-State and how I plan to teach in the future. I would encourage schools to increase the use of laptops and iPads in the classroom, so students can work more individually with these resources.

My Wow Moment

I think what surprised me this semester was how many educators are involved in getting a lot of aspects of technology incorporated into schools. There are a LOT of educators online, especially twitter and other social networking sites for educators, that are passionate about using technology in their classrooms and work to incorporate it all of the time.

When I saw Cyndi's list for how many educators from all over the world are on twitter, and tweet to each other to try to help with learning and technology, I was really surprised. I was also surprised when I saw the other social networking site that educators can join and just answer each others questions about lesson plans and being a new teacher. I had no idea that I had these type of resources available to me, and I think they will be really helpful as a new teacher.

Another "Wow" moment for me was when I learned about Delicious. I think Delicious will be helpful for me for a long time. You can easily collect hundreds of websites and organize them to find them when you need them.

Overall, I found a lot of great resources I didn't even know existed this semester.

Podcast Favorites

I listened to a lot of podcasts this semester. They were all very resourceful and easy to listen to. I think my favorite podcast was Kevin Honeycutt's podcast Driving Questions in Education 2011.

I learned a lot from these podcast, but what I learned the most about was technology. It is a really hot topic right now in education, and all of these podcasts talk about different aspects to it: why it is important to incorporate, how to incorporate it, what to use, and how to use it. They talked a lot of iPads and how to use them. They also talked a lot about different google features you can use in the classroom.

Kevin Honeycutt's was my favorite, because he is really easy to listen to. He is also really knowledgeable on the topic of education, and what we can do to keep improving it. He had some great guest speakers who had great ideas on how to help education and incorporate technology, also. I learned a lot from his podcasts.

Semester Favorites

I had a lot of favorite resources I learned this semester in Educational Technology.

- Animoto
Animoto is a great website, and it is one of my favorite websites I learned about this semester. It is very versatile. You can use it for fun, and for educational purposes. You don't put a lot of text on it, but it is a very visual resource. I think students can use this to show their knowledge of a topic, but teachers can also use it to give a fun introduction to a new topic to the class. 

- Glogster
I really like Glogster, because it is a 21st century way to have students make posters. It looks like a poster, it is simple to make, and you can put just about any type of medium on it: pictures, text, links, and videos. I think students can easily use this as a quick assignment or end of a unit project to show their knowledge of a topic. 

- Wordle
I think Wordle is a lot of fun, and visually appealing. I'm going to be an English/Journalism teacher, so Wordle is perfect in a classroom. You can easily use it for  vocabulary words. As a teacher, I could make a World of all of the vocabulary words and students would know what to study for a test. It is just an easy and pretty way for students to know what they need to learn.

- Toondoo
Toondoo is a great website, and I think it would be perfect in a middle school classroom. It is interactive and easy to use. You can make your own comic at this website, and choose from a lot of options for people and backgrounds. You insert your own text into the comic. I think that this would be a great tool for students who want alternative versions to assignments. A student who has problems focusing on writing  a longer paragraph could use this tool to get their point across in a shorter form. It is just a good alternative for students to use to display their knowledge.

Podcast Reflection #12: Edtechweekly #189

I listened to a Ed Tech Weekly podcast from the Ed Tech Talk website this week. You can find the podcast here.

This week they talked about connectivism. Connectivism is basically the design and delivery of using social networking in learning. The talked about the pros and cons of connectivism and how it works in the classroom. They also talked about pros and cons of getting an LMS for their school district, and how some teachers are not willing to fully commit to the aspect of this online learning. I think it is a highly debatable topic.

They also talked about how Journalism is affected with the addition of new technology. I think this is an important topic, because I'm going to be a Journalism Teacher. I think that teachers need to learn technology and understand how technology is going to work in the journalism field in the future. A lot of journalism online is replacing paper journalism, and the future of journalism is kind of up in the air.

Overall, I think it is important to incorporate technology into the classroom, but I'm not sure how far the incorporation should go.

Podcast Reflection #11: Chimping, Virtual Stickies, App Woes, Firefox 4 (Tony Vincent)

I listened to a Tony Vincent podcast today from the Learning in Hand podcast website. You can find a list of Tony's podcasts here. 

Tony talked about a lot of things in his latest podcast, but one of the interesting things I learned about was "Chimping."

Tony describes chimping as taking a picture with a digital camera, and then immediately your camera around to look at it. I thought this was interesting, because this is something I do a lot. They call it chimping because you are looking at the picture going "oooh ooooh oooh!" to admire your shot. Meanwhile, you are missing whatever is going on in the scenery that you were just taking a picture of.

As a future journalism teacher, I think it is important to teach students to be aware of their surroundings when they are shooting photography or film, as well when they are taking notes to write articles. It is fine to "chimp" when you are taking personal photos, but you want every chance to get that important picture when you are doing it for an article. I think students need to be aware of their surroundings to be a journalist.

Podcast Reflection #10: Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education.

This week I watched Salman Khan's video on Khan Academy. You can find it here.

I really like the idea of Salman Khan's videos. Students can watch these video lectures at home, and do more interactive classwork. Teachers say that they are now having students watch these lectures at home, and what used to be homework is now classwork. Students get to work more with teachers now. Students get a self-paced lecture.

The only thing I don't really like about these lectures is that you can't really make them your own. As a teacher, I would like to put my own personalized touch on lessons. You don't really control the lectures or content with these videos, although you do get more class time working with students. The issue may be that students could not watch these lectures at home. So in order for this to work, students may need to take notes on the lectures to turn in for credit so that you know the students are keeping up with the lectures.

These lectures sound like they are really helping students, so I like the idea of using them and getting more time to interact with students in the classroom. It might make subjects much easier to understand, especially math. I probably could have used these lectures when I took math in high school.