When I first started this class I was pretty nervous because I am not the best at working with technology and creating new material on different platforms. After going through this class I have become much more confident in working with technology and now feel that I will be able to learn new platforms more easily in the future. Most of what we have learned in this class can very easily be transferred into the teaching world, and I plan on doing just that. We live in a world that is becoming more reliant on technology, and because of this, I have found that it is important to get students acclimated to using it as fast as possible. Technology can be seen as a negative thing to be used in classrooms, especially with younger students, but I now believe that it is an important aspect of the curriculum and will be embraced by students of any age. This class has really shown me how to incorporate technology appropriately into my lessons and how to make that use of technology fun and relatable to the subject material.
One of my favorite assignments we completed is a comparison of two platforms. Both platforms are found to have appropriate and easy to use tools, but I found Wakelet to be more fun to use and gives a lot more options of how you can present material. This is just one example of how I learned to not only create with and use a platform, but how I learned to compare and contrast similar platforms for the same purpose.
In this lesson I used Adobe Spark and Quicktime Player in order to create a lesson based on seeds sprouting. These platforms were really cool to use in sync as they allowed for a lesson with not only visuals, but with the teacher speaking and with questions input throughout the video. Lessons that allow for multiple ways of learning help all students who need to learn in different ways. Incorporating two platforms into one lesson also allowed for me to practice using more than one platform and see what I could create.
For our final project in this class we were asked to create a final lesson using some of the platforms we have learned about and used in the class. This final lesson incorporates Google Sites, Google Forms, Google Slides, and Padlet into a lesson for a kindergarten class on wants and needs. Having to create this final project allowed me to show all I have learned and practice for using technology in an actual classroom lesson.
