End of Semester Reflection

If I were to rate this Technology in Education class on a scale of 1-10, 1 being learning nothing new, and 10 being overwhelmed with new and engaging material, I would without a doubt rate it as a 10. Overwhelmed, in some classes, might be a bad thing, but this is not the case of Tech in Ed. One of the things that we talked about last night is that this class prepared us with a plethora of resources, and not only the resources themselves, but the skills and the confidence to take the initiative and go learn about new programs to see if they would beneficial to one day integrate into the class.

I think one thing that this class has helped me with is confidence in approaching technology. Learning new technology can be very intimidating, but this class helped me to realize all of the awesome resources available (a lot of them for free) and if I'm interested in the program to just go for it: mess around with the tools, see what it can do, etc. It was really cool to see everyone's final presentations and all of the different tools and programs that they presented. I want to go back to many of those sites and mess around with them over the summer (so thank you Professor Sorenson for reading my mind creating a blog where we can access all of these!) As one of my fellow students said last night, this class has helped to make us aware about the need for technology integration into classes, the benefit it can have in engaging students, the accessibility of many of the resources for teachers, and the simplicity of the programs, all to result in giving us teachers a desire to search out the technological and educational world. Technology can be integrated in such creative manners that can make classes more engaging and relevant to the students of toady, and I am glad that I have been made aware and prepared to take advantage of this.

As I reflected on my NETS, I laughed as I naively and foolishly set a goal to make a few different powerpoints over the semester with no relation to any other classes than I'm taking. While I didn't fulfill this goal, I think that I learned something that will be more valuable to me as a teacher and a person who desires to have a life outside of school too: Beg, Borrow, and Steal! Why reinvent the wheel? There are a multitude of outstanding resources available. Now here is where the NETS standards come in. When I find these resources that I want to use in my class, the NETS standards are good to use to evaluate how effective this resource actually is. The NETS standards are very practical and are a good way to keep yourself in check as a teacher to help integrate technology into education for your students as effectively and as beneficially as possible.

Thank you so much Professor Sorenson for an engaging semester that helped me to grow as a future teacher and helped to open my eyes to the benefits and necessities to the TechEd world!