What did you learn about the intersection of technology and instruction? What was your progress on becoming a “tech-savvy” teacher?
I really enjoyed this class because I learned many useful ways to encourage students to want to participate in class activities. Many students today are captivated by technology. The various programs that we learned about are perfect for getting students interested in a topic. My favorite programs that we experimented with were Adobe Spark Post, Sway, EDPuzzle, Padlet, and Google Sites. This class not only taught me about valuable tech programs but also how to make the lesson meaningful for both the students and the teacher by giving students the chance to be involved in the lesson. At the beginning of this course, I was not aware of the majority of different tech tools that were available for teachers. I was excited to learn that they are all user-friendly, fun, different, and allow the students to become involved, hands-on, in their learning experience.
This class was driven by mini-projects instead of test and papers. How did you respond? What does that tell you about student motivation?
I really enjoyed the set up of this class. I learn best through hands-on activities, so the different assignments we created engaged me and made me excited to learn about the different programs. I was also able to understand the content more throughly and then apply it in my own way. Because the class was student motivated, I had an appreciation for what we were learning and therefore put more effort into the class because I wanted to know about the different programs. This class has further encouraged me to create lessons in which students are able to participate in ways that allow them to be creative, use different materials, and work with peers.