My parents might think I'm a wizard when it comes to technology, but that comes primarily from a generational gap between us. In reality, I'm sure there are future students who probably know way more than I do, and they'll probably to continue to exponentially know more than me.
Some of my fears dissipated as the course went along. A ton of the technology we encountered in this class were things I knew nothing about prior to this class. I dreaded having to use them, freaking out that I'd be out of my depth. But it turned out that many of these websites and technology applications were fairly intuitive and easy to use.
The course also heavily reinforced my guiding view of technology and education prior to entering the class. I came from the perspective that the latest generation of students has been born-and-bred on digital technology and therefore is very likely to be keen to use it in the classroom. A belief that class went out of its way to prove at every turn.
Take one example of this reinforcement of my views of technology. Week 1 had the directed versus constructivist debate, which seemed to go out of its way to make directed instruction appear almost entirely irrelevant (To be fair, it's not. It's just tremendously overused). The constructivist integration strategies are so highly appealing because they encourage students to collaboratively and creatively explore their interests using technology.
These strategies were still proving themselves to be potent in Week 4 when the chapter on my content area (Chapter 12) detailed multiple constructivist approaches for technology integration. The case in their favor was still strong in Week 5, when I highly considered including a discussion of constructvism in my Web of Wonders project (You can see how it might have fit in to the Power Point and screencast presentation by checking out my written report on the final project). It all came full circle. That's a pretty nice achievement when it comes learning outcomes.
There are numerous assignments and activities from the class to contemplate, but I'll only talk about a few so that this blog post doesn't end up any longer than it needs to.
The Technology Integration Workshop assignments were admittedly a little tough. They required a lot of time and effort to be done correctly. But I appreciated the way they forced us to really dwell on how technology is actually integrated in the classroom. They made us think about how we ourselves would go about the process of incorporating technology. Some types of technologies and some chapters provided better opportunities for considering technology in instruction. This was especially true of the Technology Integration Activity on blogs, Power Points and Wikipedia.
I also liked the group work. Again, admittedly, it was tough at times to get people together to complete assignments. However, I really liked some of the topics of discussion and debate, and the dialogues that this initiated.
Finally, I appreciated having to write a philosophy of education statement. I've had a number of ideas rattling around my head as to why I want to become a teacher, but it was nice to finally articulate them. The philosophy of education assignment helped shape my final Web of Wonders project. Thinking about topics like digital literacy, digital citizenship, and the influence of social networking all helped inform the final product of the WoW assignment.
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