Blog Post #1

Describe your technology strengths and weaknesses. As an educator, how do you plan to use your technology strengths? What do you feel you need to do to overcome your weaknesses. What would you like to learn about technology in order to improve your instructional strategies?

As our world becomes more reliant on technology it is important to evaluate personal technology strengths and weaknesses in order to grow and use these new technologies to their full potential.

In reference to technology, I have several strengths and weaknesses. A technology strength that I possess is perseverance. It is not in my personality to give up. Sometimes new technology can be hard to setup or troubleshoot, but my perseverance will help me to push through any struggles that I may encounter. Another technology strength I possess is a strong willingness to learn and a genuine interest in technology. As new gadgets come onto the market, I tend to be very excited and ready to learn how to use these technologies in my daily life. This passion toward exploring new technology will help me as a teacher and librarian so that I can incorporate cutting edge technology into my lessons and help other teacher to do so as well. For example, eReaders are a newer technology that I use in my daily life; I see that these eReaders could become a huge resource in the public school system in the future. As an educator I will use my technology strengths to strongly incorporate technology into my lesson planning, and to help other teachers do the same.

Although I have several technology strengths, I am far from a technological guru. A major technology weakness of mine is that I sometimes procrastinate. This may not sound like it directly relates to technology, but it does. With technology there are sometimes unexpected problems that occur, if you wait until the last minute to do something, there is not time to complete the task and troubleshoot, if needed. As an educator it is extremely important, both when technology is involved or not, to plan ahead for the unexpected. To overcome this flaw of mine, I will have to push myself to always test my technology prior to teaching a lesson. For example, If I were to make a power point presentation at home, I should test to see if this presentation will be compatible with the school computer so that I can prevent any unforeseen issues.

To improve my instructional strategies I would love to learn about new technologies. So far, from reading though the course textbook Instructional Technology and Media for Learning by Smaldino, Lowther, and Russell I see that there are many technologies that can be utilized in the classroom that I was unaware existed. For example, Webquests seem like a great way to get students engaged in a lesson, while reinforcing technology skills. Learning about new technologies would help me improve my instructional strategies, by expanding my knowledge of resources.