Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Blog Post 1: Technology Strengths and Weakness
My greatest strength as a technological educator lies in my familiarity with a variety of real-world situations which warrant the creative use of technological tools. Teachers and employers often only teach a single way to accomplish a task and while this may be the most efficient way, it may not always be the most accessible. With the experiences I've had training coworkers on different programs, I am aware of many different methods to achieve a result and while some may take longer, they may be easier for a person to understand. In addition, my undergraduate work focused on history which blurs many lines between plagiarism and scholarship. My instructors spent much of their time insuring that we were aware of what constituted plagiarism and what was necessary to structure a successful argument without access to primary sources or the sites from which objects were found. This level of expertise can be passed on to my students, regardless of age level and should help them use information responsibly.
Despite the inundation of technology in my life, I still have a natural inclination to resist its use in all levels of society. I understand the value of technology and I will need to become used to seeing computers and multimedia devices become increasingly common for education as well as entertainment. Though I may be inclined to have a "powerless" lesson, I would do better for my students in engaging the use of technology as often as I can unless it is directly contrary to a lesson goal. I will also need to work on always increasing my familiarity with software and the new hardware that continues to reshape personal computing as we know it. I do not keep up with the latest developments anywhere near enough as I ought to.
I would like to learn ways to incorporate devices the students are already using into their lessons. Smartphones, MP3 players, and laptops are increasingly common to see in a classroom and I want to find a way to tap into the natural inclination to use said devices for directly educational purposes. Using these technologies becomes easier if it is something the student is inclined to do and I want to find a way to encourage them to explore methods for storing and organizing data that will be useful to them. More importantly, I want to prepare them for the data aggregation tools of the next generation and to do that, I need to become more familiar with such tools myself. Media editing (such as Photoshop or a Movie Maker program) is another area that I could stand to improve on. While I may not need advanced abilities in such programs, I would like to give an introductory lesson on their use instead of muddling through the options until something works.
NETS.T. (2008). Nets.T standards. ISTE. Retrieved from: http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets
t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Despite the inundation of technology in my life, I still have a natural inclination to resist its use in all levels of society. I understand the value of technology and I will need to become used to seeing computers and multimedia devices become increasingly common for education as well as entertainment. Though I may be inclined to have a "powerless" lesson, I would do better for my students in engaging the use of technology as often as I can unless it is directly contrary to a lesson goal. I will also need to work on always increasing my familiarity with software and the new hardware that continues to reshape personal computing as we know it. I do not keep up with the latest developments anywhere near enough as I ought to.
I would like to learn ways to incorporate devices the students are already using into their lessons. Smartphones, MP3 players, and laptops are increasingly common to see in a classroom and I want to find a way to tap into the natural inclination to use said devices for directly educational purposes. Using these technologies becomes easier if it is something the student is inclined to do and I want to find a way to encourage them to explore methods for storing and organizing data that will be useful to them. More importantly, I want to prepare them for the data aggregation tools of the next generation and to do that, I need to become more familiar with such tools myself. Media editing (such as Photoshop or a Movie Maker program) is another area that I could stand to improve on. While I may not need advanced abilities in such programs, I would like to give an introductory lesson on their use instead of muddling through the options until something works.
NETS.T. (2008). Nets.T standards. ISTE. Retrieved from: http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets
t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2
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