Welcome to the End but also the Beginning of the future of technology in my classroom.
Wow! What a semester and what an amazing adventure in Ed Tech. I came into the class not really sure about technology in the classroom. I wanted to implement technology in my future classroom but wanted to use it as efficiently and productively as I could. After this semester I was also reminded of the importance of technology. I write this as we are going through the coronavirus pandemic and many schools are using technology to teach and communicate with their students. I have heard from teachers that they wish they had the opportunity to explore some of what technology has to offer, and now they do. They want to know more about technology so they are able to support and engage with their students as much a possible. I am thankful that I was given a start with discovery with this. Technology is something that is always around our students and so we must make sure to utilize it in our classrooms as teachers. This class helped me realize how important technology is in the classroom. I was also introduced to so many apps and sites to help me do everything. I was able to discover how to utilize technology whether it is creating a website, making books online to finding easy ways to get informal assessment data on what we are working on. I was also able to see the support that technology can give a teacher in making sure all of her students are able to access the material. I have included some of my work this semester along with the apps/sites I definitely plan to use in my future classrooms.
One of my favorite creations was a video of me reading to my students on Spark Adobe. I found Spark Adobe to be very easy to use. I was able to include my video of reading as well as the words on the page to support reading. In this post I read A Chair For My Mother” by Vera B. Williams. I have seen different school employees and even celebrities read to children and I love this! I have learned the importance for young kids to interact with literature and I want to create access for my students to listen and read books if they aren’t receiving this at home. I also think that this can help build my relationship with my students.
In this post we were assigned to look at different apps and then compare them. The two apps I used were Bubbl.us and Padlet. I can see myself using Bubbl.us for a writing workshop. I made a map on Padlet and liked all of the options I had from different maps to how you can add pictures from online. I also like all of the Padlet form options you can use. I definitely think this app could be great to use in the classroom. I think this could be a great app to explore the world and to practice the Capitals. It would give a visual of all the capitals and then the pictures could also help students remember the capitals. Bubbl.us is also such a great app to use to help students organize their thoughts and could be used for a writing lesson with a web. I also think these apps could be used by students because they are so easy to work with and create.
Another creation of mine was a history lesson and I used EdPuzzle. This lesson would be an introduction to a lesson to prepare for a history lesson where we learn about different countries/places! I also think this is a great activity to get students to think about different places and to see someone their age while combining with their imaginative side.The post includes someone reading a book and then there are questions. I like that this lesson also would help my students think about with technology how they can connect with other children even another countries! EdPuzzle was very easy to navigate but also had a lot of content already on it so it would be really great to use this to create a lesson.
For my final project I created a Google website as a mock classroom website. I included an activity where students will create a book about themselves and then read it to the class. I would do this lesson at the beginning of the year to create a classroom community. The students would create their books on Padlet. It was very easy to navigate and easy to upload things off of my computer. I really liked creating a class website on Google. I enjoy using Google and everything on Drive. I want to create a class website because it is such a great way to communicate. I would include weekly updates and even try to include all of our lessons. I also would include links to school links like the school calendar. A Google website is also an easy way for absent students and their families to know what they are missing and should work on.
