My Experiences in "Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work and Society"

As this course is coming to an end, I am realizing how much I have learned.  Through this course, I have been required to jump head first into new pieces of technology that I have not experienced before.  For example, I have played around with blogs in my classroom before, but I now have my own blog.  I learned a little bit about podcasting at a conference, but never created one until now.  I even used a wiki in a way that I have not done before and learned how to do things on it that I did not know before.  I truly have gained quite a bit of technology experience over these last seven weeks.  Through these experiences, I have tried new things in my classroom.  I have been experimenting with blogging a little bit more, and my students are excited about using it.  All of my students have worked together to record how their group solved a math problem and uploaded it to their group blog.  I am excited to how this course has pushed me so that I can push my students.

Not only have I learned about technology resources, but I have also learned about the 21st century student.  Education should be changing more drastically to meet the needs and future of our students.  Students need to be more comfortable with technology and how to use it.  Students need to become problem solvers and critical thinkers.  Realizing all of these things has helped me to think about how I teach my students and how I can change it.  I have already started to think about what I can do differently.  For example, in the next science unit I teach, I am going to have my students create a simple machines wiki where each group of students has to research a simple machine and add to their page of the wiki.  I feel this is a better way of teaching about simple machines instead of the class reading a book and answering questions about what they read.  They also may take it more seriously since it will be on the internet and other people will read it.

I would like to continue to research new technology tools and resources so that I can offer more experiences for my students.  I would like to follow a few blogs I have found to keep up on these things.  I have two long term goals for myself.  I would like to continue to teach social studies and science in different ways.  I want to start to incorporate a more student-centered way of learning in all subjects, but I want to start in social studies and science.  I feel these two subject areas will be the easiest place to start changing.  I want it to be less about textbooks and science kits, and more about what our students can get out of it.  I would be interesting if after each lab experiment we complete, the students could get on a blog and write about what they learned from that experiment.  After they have completed a unit, they can use their blog to help them to create a final project to represent what they have learned throughout the unit.  In social studies, I want my students to be provided with more resources and be able to combine what they have learned from a multitude of resources, instead of just the textbook.  I want them to be able to create projects to teach their classmates about what they have learned.  Some of our social studies units are easier to do this with than others.  I know that if these are my two goals to accomplish over the next few years, I can do it one unit at a time.