Blog Post #4

Now that we finished the semester, consider your first assessment of your technology skills. What are your strengths and weaknesses now? How will you continue to learn about technology after this class is finished?

Throughout this semester, I have learned a lot about web 2.0 tools and how I can use them in my teaching and in my personal life. One of the main things I learned is how to incorporate web 2.0 tools into my life as an organizational tool. For example, diigo is a tool that I now use in my personal research and when organizing information for lesson planning. Google docs and Voice Thread are also technology tools that would come in handy for me in the future. I have also improved upon my technology strengths and weaknesses. At the beginning of the semester I said that a major weakness I had was procrastination when dealing with technology. I would say that I have improved drastically in this regard. Since I was dealing with web 2.0 tools that were completely new to me, I made sure to start my assignments with plenty of time to troubleshoot, if needed. I think the distance learning format of this class also helped me to not procrastinate as well because if I had a question about my work, I would need ample time to post questions to the discussion board or email the professor.

I also feel that I have found out new technology strengths and weaknesses in myself. A new weakness that I found in myself concerning technology use, is that when I get stuck, I do not know how to move forward. For example, when trying to embed certain projects into my live binder, once I tried everything I could think of, I would often end up stuck. This was a huge learning experience for me, and I learned that when I am stuck I should ask for help. I cannot know how to do something I have never done before, and there is nothing wrong with asking for help. A new strength that I have found through this course, is my ability to use technology creatively in my lesson planning. Before this course, I think I looked at technology as a way to do the same old things I was doing, but in an up-dated manner. In other words, instead of students doing an oral presentation with a poster, I would update this lesson by having students use a powerpoint presentation. Now, however, I see that I wasn’t using technology integration to its fullest potential. Teachers must go beyond this level of technology integration, and move toward helping students use technology in creative and new ways. After learning about so many web 2.0 tools in this course, I have the ability to integrate these technologies into my teaching, so that students are creatively using technology.

To continue learning about technology integration in the classroom, I will remain active in professional organizations. For example, I am signed up for several librarianship listservs. Using resources like listservs will allow me to remain more up-to-date on new technologies with minimal personal research time. I will also continue to make a priority of integrating technology into my teaching and for my personal use.