Teaching+with+Technology

Reflections

Week 1:

I enjoyed learning more about the theory behind constructivism. This is the method of teaching that I strive to provide to my students and as a pre k teacher I really feel like it is the best way to ensure a successful year for me and my students. I loved reading the section about the traditional classroom and the learner centered classroom. It is so easy for me to see how outdated the traditional model of teaching is, but unfortunately not every teacher is of the same opinion yet. Another area I found interesting was the part in the text book that talked about how technology can be super effective with at-risk and special needs children. My classroom is made up of at-risk children because of their poverty level and it is always great to give them access to something that they do not have at home. Now, I am excited to see what I will learn in the next few weeks from this course.

Week 2:

This week I learned a lot about effective ways to communicate with parents. Whether it is blogs, wikis, email or newsletters, there are several ways to keep parents in the loop on their children's school work. As a parent I know how important it is for me to stay in touch with my son's teachers, even though we are trying to teach him responsibility, I like to know what he is working on so that nothing falls through the cracks. I use a webpage that is linked to our campus website, to communicate current events to our parents. Also, the readings have brought to my attention the value of student organization software. I think students like to be in charge of their learning and software like Kidspirationa and Inspiration are great tools for them to use. They can track their progress and this can help the teacher create lessons that are meaningful and the most beneficial to the students.

Week 3: This week took me out of my comfort zone. I have never worked with ebooks before, and I literally sat at my computer for two hours going, maybe a kids book, no maybe a training manual, no that is not what they want. So, finally I went with a childen's book. That is the audience I am familiar with, so when in doubt stick with what you know. I also learned a great deal from using the UDL lesson builder. I have become a lazy lesson plan maker and it really opened my eyes to what needs to go into a solid lesson plan. If you want the students to be engaged give them engaging materal.

Week 4: This has been the hardest week for me in this class. Nornally I feel pretty confident in the work I turn in, but my assignemt from last week was incomplete and that put me behind for this week. Now I feel like I am scrambling to catch up. When I finally sat down to read this weeks selections I was drawn to the section about "base groups". When you are going through a program like Lamar, it is vital to communicate with other students that are working with the same material you are. It was especially nice to find a group of fellow students that have young children and busy lives. We used Skype and Google Documents to stay in contact and work cooperatively. The other area I learned more about was course management websites. I had heard about Blackboard being used, especially at the college level, but I did not realize that Moodle was also a management site. We have teachers in our district that use Moodle, but I never knew what they did with it. My current students are too young to utilize the web site, but I plan on moving to a higher grade level and will keep Moodle in my mind for that time.

Week 5: This weeks readings covered assessments and reinforcing effort, and I learned how closely tied they were to each other. By providing students with an effort rubric they can be prepared for the upcoming unit and they would be able to blog about their questions or post them to a subject related wiki. By putting effort into their work and keeping track of their learning, the teacher has resources for assessing the students' progress. This class has been beneficial, but it did not turn out to be what I expected. I did not anticipate learning about rubrics or reinforcing effort, but I appreciate all the skills I developed during this course. I think I will be able to put more of the online learning resources into play when I move into a higher grade level, which I hope to do soon. Teaching pre k does not lend itself to web based learning activities.