Lessons Learned

This activity helped me to explore my strengths and weaknesses related to teaching technology, helped me realize there are many options available when it comes to ways I can present lessons to my students using technology, and helped me see that the students I will teach in the future do not want to be taught the same was as I was taught in the past. I have realized that I have a great deal to work on in regards to technology if I intend on helping my students learn in a technology rich environment. I have many strengths, but need to strengthen them as well. There are so many options when it comes to educating students today. From a link on one of the websites we were asked to read, I found an article titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky. From this article, I learned that I definitely am a digital immigrant. As such, I need to accept that I don’t know much about many technologies available and I need to take the opportunity to learn from digital natives in order to integrate. The students that I will teach are digital natives and they think and process information differently from me. In order to engage my students I need to find effective ways to incorporate technology into the traditional curriculum.

This activity helped me see various forms of technology used in the classroom including online courses, web quests, classroom websites, electronic books, social networking, and computer games to name a few. Technology is growing at an exponential rate and to be of service to the students I will teach, I need to use technology in the classroom in a useful way. The article titled The New WWW helped me to realize that students today are accustomed to having whatever they want, whenever they want it and getting it where ever they want it. As an educator I can help students make satisfying choices through engaging them in technology rich learning activities and helping them engage in service to others.