Strengths and Weaknesses

I think the best thing to say, as far as my strengths in technology go, is that I am open-minded. I do use technology in creating activities for students and in my own research for what I want to present or show. I recognized though that I can see myself in the future, as a teacher, using all of these great tools myself to help be more organized or informed but failing to teach the students to do so themselves. This is the difference between teaching using a PowerPoint presentation and letting the students teach a topic using the PowerPoint themselves. Or, I could create a great photo story myself and be excited to show it to them because of how greatly it will impact their lives, but not give them the opportunity to work on one themselves.

I think this problems I have just goes along with the same shift that is happening for a lot of us in the program as we learn that the teacher role is much different now than it was when we were being taught in elementary. It is the shift from teacher-directed to student-directed. We are not the dispensers of all knowledge, or in this discussion , the all-powerful wielders of the technology sword but are here to give to students the opportunities to use the same tools we use in teaching, in their learning.

I think that in order to impove I just need to see more concrete examples of ways to use technology in the classroom. In our social studies class we were shown a website that had examples of teachers actually teaching...not just the lesson plans but a recording of it. I would probably need exposure to things like that for technology. And that was something else pointed out in our reading...technology is not an outside class for just technology but should be incorporated. The website was www.teachinghistory.org . I would also go onto the UEN website and search within a topic and find technology rich lessons (with technology already integrated into the lesson).