My Aha's

Over the past several weeks, my idea of educational technology has been transformed into something meaningful and relevant to my life. The journey started with writing my philosophy on educational technology. While writing it several weeks ago, I was sure of my views about education and the impact technology has on it. But in retrospect, I really didn’t have an idea of how powerful educational technology truly is. Through the different activities and journal articles, I started to see how my professor facilitated a learning environment that really allowed me to reevaluate my ideas on education and best instructional practices.  Learners today are powerful because they have so many tools at their disposal. Blogs, Wikis, and Web 2.0 applications provide unlimited possibilities for student learning. As an educator AND today’s learner, I see the value and importance in something like an ePortfolio that allows you to facilitate your own learning while connecting with world around you. My new outlook has fueled my desire to learn more about educational technology and remain current with the trends and innovations shaping the field.

I plan to continue using my blog that I created in this class. I think I want to take it in a different direction though. I want to spark more conversations from other educators on the benefit of educational technology. I also want to dialog with people about what we can do to make changes with teachers who are resistant. 

Week 7 - iGoogle - do you?

This week, you were asked to create or redesign a lesson/training plan that incorporated technology into the mix. What did you decided to do? What tools did you incorporate from the elearning tools wiki and/or from Google?

I decided to create a lesson for a 5^th grade science class using Google earth to explore the Grand Canyon and have student create video brochure of places to visit in the grand canyon using JING. Student will also use a class blog to share what they have learned, interact with classmates, and respond to question provided by the teacher.

As you watch the videos below, please share your thoughts as to how we can improve student learning. 

We can improve student learning by helping our teachers become more literate about educational technology and its benefits to student learning. Two excuses always surface when I meet teachers who are not blending technology and best instructional practices for students in their class. The first excuse, “I have not been “properly trained” on how to use wikis, blogs, and podcast in my room.” The second excuse, “there isn’t enough time to utilize technology because we have so much other stuff to do.” Neither of those reasons are sufficient and it really boils down to being afraid of what you don’t know. We have to do a better job of training our teachers and helping those who are reluctant to change find something better suited for them. Most districts offer some type of professional development to teachers (usually optional) that demonstrates how to use different technologies in the classroom. In order to get more teachers to utilize technology and engage our students in task that are meaningful and relevant we must redesign our curriculum so that web 2.0 technologies are blended in with the instruction. Then, the accountability for teachers increases. More teachers will then take it upon themselves to attend professional development training on different technologies and start requesting that there district or school offer more to support them. Right now a lot of what teachers use in the classroom as far as web 2.0 technologies is optional. But I don’t think it should be.