Week 6 EDCI5825

Discuss the following on your blog in class:

How your view of instructional technology has or has not changed over the course of the semester.

I am very impressed with the wealth of Internet tools out there. I am very happy that I have been exposed to some which are very practical for classroom purpose. I believe when using these tools I would be able to engage my students in interactive learning and they too would be motivated to learn. It is also my hope that students with special needs would be able to improve tremendously with the use of technology. Preparing instructional plan has also become easy especially when I have to make changes I would not have to re-do the whole thing. I feel I have been initiated into a new dimension of of instruction and I love doing what I am doing.

The quality and appropriateness of what you have learned/created this semester.

As a beginner with Macbook and most of the Internet tools that were introduced, I have had my fair share of struggles trying to grasp and becoming efficient at it. SmartBoard is an excellent tool to use during instruction. It has myriads of functions that could vary my teaching method and not get the students bored with the same thing. Wiki, Glogster and making videos are essential to make a classroom interactive and to get students connected. Based on some video clips on youtube, I realize students love to use technology. Therefore,I should take advantage of what I have learnt.

Evaluation of your comfort moving forward with technology.

Although I still have some problems in using it efficiently, I believe they are teething problems. I intend to continuously practice so that I could use it efficiently in the Fall semester when do my student teaching. I should also be good at it so that I could help my students when they encounter problems. Besides, my cooperative teacher is also very keen on the things that I am learning and I would like to share it with her. I would really love to learn more of technology.

EDCI 5825 Week 6 Assignment

It was interesting to read my coursemates’ blog posts. It was convenient to browse through the posts because the posts were titled explicitly which made it easy for a reader to select what they want to read. I notice the blogs were written in many interesting and different ways for the same tasks that we had to do as assignments. In EDC I 5065, we have chosen to write our theories of learning based on our personal beliefs on what is effective. I read with interest how some theories of learning were interpreted and it gave me a different perspective to approach the theories of learning. Also, there was salient information, which is substantiated by reliable citations and succinctly explicated for the benefit of any reader. The Google reader is an efficient way of learning from peers. It provides a platform for a reader to learn from the more knowledgeable other that is a development from what the reader already know to what the reader can achieve. This is possible with educational support and in this case in the context of Google reader. This is actually the summary of what I read from my coursemates’ blogs on theories of learning. One post that I strongly identify with is one I found in Matt’s blog on the benefit of using new technologies in the classroom. It is stated in his blog that, “new technologies allow students to collaborate on projects and work individually on them while at the same time work together with other group members to accomplish a larger task.” I like the idea that although students work collaboratively they are actually working alone. It is true that individual students contribute to the collaborative work. What happens is that in the discussion of presenting the ideas, better ideas get selected. This is what peer learning is all about. It does not only enhance students’ learning but also social-emotional skills, which is necessary for students to be very motivated and self-regulated in the learning environment. Successful learning occurs when the environment is supportive which inevitably promotes positive learning situation in collaborative work.