Reflective Blog #3

Reflective Blog #3

1. What are the takeaways from the articles on 21^st Century Skills and the Common Core AND/OR the material from John Hattie that will influence your technology.

In the article on 21^st Century Skills, I like the idea how they emphasis the skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. I think these are the ultimate goals of teaching and learning in all subjects, but it will be very hard for educators to achieve. For example, teachers can arrange their students in different groups, and give them group project to do. However, it is very hard for teachers to teach their students how to communicate and collaborate with their team members. Technology may be very helpful in this aspect. Many students are good at social network by Internet. Using Internet as a way for collaborating may work very well for some students.

I also like the idea of Common Core State Standards. I think it will be great that all states in America have a common standard for teaching. I believe if all states use one good core standard it will benefit students much more than create their own teaching standards. If all schools use the CCSS, students won’t have problems when they transfer from one state to another. I think it is also benefit students in job hunting. Teachers can use Internet to communicate and exchange teaching experiences with other teachers all over the nation. The CCSS will benefit both students and teachers.

      

 2. How your project experience has helped you?

I think my project experience helped me a lot. When I was trying to collect materials for writing the project I found out a lot of interesting and useful software and teaching strategies. Most of them can be used in my future classroom. For example, I found a great dictionary website. It explains the meaning of English vocabulary clearly and also introduces some relative words by connecting to the target word. The whole system is created as a network system. It looks pretty, especially when we use it on iPads. I think it will be very useful when I teach students English language arts in the future.

I also think that my project experience influenced my idea of making teaching plans. Before taking this class, teaching plans are designed to make sure that all teaching contents are included. After writing projects for this class, I found writing teaching plans is a great chance for teachers to check what technologies can be used in the classroom. I knew that many technological devices are not fully used in modern classroom. This class helped us to create a kind of “habit”. Now I think we all have the habit to think how we can use technology as much as we can in our classroom. I think it is very good because teaching with technology makes learning interesting and efficient.

3. How you see technology being used in your own classroom?

I am a full time student now, so I would like to talk about how technology being used in classes that I took before. Most teachers prefered to use PowerPoint, videos, and projectors in their classrooms. They also liked to share documents with their students by Internet and sent emails to make announcements. However, only some of them actually used technology as a teaching strategy. Only half of them included online discussion, BlackBoard grade evaluation system, or other technologies in their teaching. I think all teachers knew how to use them, but they were just not accustomed to use them in their classrooms. I believe it is a common phenomenon in modern classroom.

 4. What your future plans for technology in you teaching?

I think, first, I will do some research in my future classroom. I will try to find what educational technologies are exited here. Then I will try to analyze how many of them can be used to serve my teaching. Third, I will try to search how my colleagues are using technologies in their classrooms. Finally I will try to use the technologies which fit my teaching goals most to help my teaching. I will use most of the technologies to ask students to preview and review my lessons, so I will spend less time on lecture. In this way there is much more time left for students to do critical thinking and creative activities.  

5.   How do you plan to keep up with technologies.

I believe keep my knowledge of technology up to date is very necessary. I think in the future I will keep extending my personal learning network which can help me to discover and collect useful teaching strategies. I will also pay attention to build the network with teachers in my working district. We can collaborate and exchange teaching experiences with each other.  Reading journals about educational technology which related to my teaching subject will also be my choice. I believe attending some conferences online will also be a good option for me. I think as far as I realize the importance of using technology in classroom, there are many ways can be used to keep my knowledge up to date.

6. What are outstanding issues or question you think need to be addressed as you continue to learn about and use technology?

I think this class introduced me a lot of great ideas and useful information. Before taking this class, I thought the development of technology has nothing to do with me because it will never be my teaching subject. However, after this class, I’m looking at technology in a totally different way. I will be interested in what the newest technology can do right now, and whether it can be used in my teaching. I can’t wait to use the knowledge I learned here. However, I do have two concerns.

First, I’m wondering what I should do if there are not many technologies I can use in my future classroom. Not all schools have fully equipped with new technologies, especially not all countries are as developed as the US. I know there are some ways that I can use traditional teaching devices to teach which have similar results of using technology. I just think I will be very disappointed if I won’t able to use technologies I learned here.

Second, I know we had discussed about this many times. I think I will still struggle with the role of technology and the role of teachers. I would like to use as much technologies as I can in the future. However, I’m wondering whether teachers should use technology as a method to serve their teaching, or teachers should play a role of assisting students to learn knowledge through technologies. I would happy to know which way is best for learning.