Technology and Myself

My Philosophy:

     As an educator, there are four main elements that will have an impact on my teaching: my students, classroom, educational values, and myself as an effective teacher. My students are first and foremost the reason for my career and the environment in which they will learn will provide them the opportunity to become creative and critical thinkers. 

     My educational values will be both liberal and vocational to reach each one of my diverse students. As an educator, I expect my student’s learning to never end; I will hold myself to that same standard, I will continue to learn throughout my career as a teacher to enhance my ability to teach. These four elements will make teaching and educating students the best experience I can provide for them.  

My Technology Experiences:

     I would consider myself technologically competent, however, I know and understand I am nowhere close to being a technological genius. I use technology in my personal and social life and am always excited to learn something new that is being developed and used. I am continuously amazed at the advancements in our world today and am excited to see where technology will go and how it will also develop in education.

     I have been fortunate enough to be able to work in classrooms throughout this teaching program and I have could witness technology being used during instruction. I have witnessed both technology being teacher based as well as student based. I have worked with students in small groups to produce Google slides which students created to present to their class to show their knowledge and understanding of a subject. I have also worked with Promethean boards in a classroom and have found students become more excited and engaged when the Promethean board is being used.

What "Technology Integration" means to me:

     Technology integration is a word that I hear very often in schools. To me, technology integrations means not only teachers utilizing technology in the classroom, but also students using the technology to show their learning and educational growth. Technology integration can utilize many different components such as computers, tablets, smart boards, blogs, and different types of technology based programs. 

Technology in my classroom:

     In my future classroom, I plan on incorporating as much technology as I can into my lessons, and assignments. I know that students today are all very comfortable and learn through technology, so to be able to reach students on that level, I plan on continuing to learn new and cutting edge developments in technology. By doing this, I know my students will benefit from the differentiated learning strategies and will keep my future classroom an exciting learning environment. Since technology is advancing so quickly, I am aware that tools and strategies I would use now, will become old news by the time I have my own classroom. However, I plan on using both virtual learning using computers or tablets, and websites that can be used by students to create tangible items that will display their learning.