Reflection

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to take this course. I love technology and want to integrate it in my career as a teacher, as I think it's one of the most important factors that can help teachers today when utilized correctly.  This course provided me with the technological resources that I will need as a teacher. Through the various assignments, I have mastered the use of technology as never before. Interacting and experimenting with tools such as blogs and web pages that enable me to share my thoughts and projects with other people is fascinating, and I think this is very useful in getting your points across, especially in education.

I really enjoyed using inspiration, Photoshop and Gimp and learned how to use them to make concept maps and manipulate images that I will use in my lesson plan. My favorite assignment, although it is challenging, is the digital story telling. I’m really enjoying creating it, as it's a really fun way to present a lesson and I’m sure that my students will enjoy learning through it. I also think that learning about copyright in depth is a vital tool that all teachers need, in addition to how to use or choose the resources.

From this course I have learned how to include the use of digital stories, blogs, and Web Pages into my classroom.  I will adjust my classroom environment and make technology a big part of it. I believe that students nowadays are more engaging in technology, and successful teachers can accomplish their goals better by utilizing technology in their teaching.

The Innovative Educator Blog, 2nd Visit

iPad Literacy Program Increases Reading & Writing Ability

In this blog entry, Lisa discusses a new educational platform called Footsteps2Brilliance that uses a gaming approach to teach young children reading and writing. I like the idea of integrating technology to the educational process of children at a very young age. It is certainly more fun to the students, therefore proving them with more incentives to learn. Lisa also mentions the fact the children will have the option of reading stories with animation, or have the story read to them, which I also find helpful.

I don't like however the fact that this program is device specific, and being offered only on an iPad. I believe such solutions should be offered on a more open platform that will enable wider adoption of such programs. 

Inquiry-based Learning

I wish I had experienced the inquiry based learning when I was a student.  When I was in high school teachers used the traditional approach where the students sat and absorb the information that was in the content without any interaction, then they were expected to memorize it and write it down in the test sheets. I think this approach has proved it’s inadequate, since the students’ participation is very passive, and the teacher’s role is just a transmitter of the content area. I’m not a teacher yet, however, my goal is to focus on inquiry based learning as a core principle of my classroom. I believe that the teacher and students should be both involved in the teaching process. The students must participate; they need to be engaged in the activities that help them build understanding not only absorbing. They have to answer the questions that they want to answer and be active participants. The teacher must be a facilitator and data and information must be actively used, interpreted, and discussed. Fortunately, I had a chance to observe a teacher who used the inquiry-based learning. It was a science class for the fifth grade and she was asking questions like how can I find how it works? What causes? Then she did experiments and engaged the students to perform the experiments with her.