Final Blog Post

This class has been an awesome experience for me. I personally have never written a blog before, so doing so in this class was a new learning experience for me that was actually very fun! I could definitely see myself continuing to write blog posts for my future classroom and their parents. Each assignment in this course was relevant and made sense with what we were learning and writing about in our blog posts! It definitely opened my mind doing online projects with my classmates. I enjoyed the instructional strategy wiki project and the lesson plan projects the most, because even though we were all assigned different things to do for the page or lesson, everything pulled in together nicely. It was also cool to see how other people handled the assignment and how they interpreted it differently than I did.

I thought the textbook was great, it was easy to read and got the point across throughout each chapter. Our assignments also connected nicely with it, and had great information to help us understand them. The only thing in the course that was not easily readable were the directions on some of the assignments, such as the discussions and the bigger projects. I feel that sometimes there was just too much information on the page and it made it feel cluttered and hard to read. That was the only issue I had with this class though! Everything else was great, especially the screen casts for larger projects.

Concerning the learning outcomes, I think that we achieved all of them. Learning how to use technology as "both a medium and a goal of K-12 instruction" definitely occurred. I like the way that outcome was phrased. Since learning about and seeing all of the different ways technology can be used in the classroom, using technology in my own classroom has definitely become a goal.

Because of this class I can see myself in the future sharing knowledge through technology more than any other generation of teachers, this is such an exciting time to be an educator!

Photo Credit to Nancy White

 

 

 

Digital Badge L

I really liked the title of Chapter 12; Integrating Technology and Creating Change as Teacher Leaders. That just shows that we as teachers are the ones who have to push the technology for change to happen, which I think is really cool. Chapter 12 made me realize that teachers have an important decision to make: to infuse of include technology in their teaching. Inclusion of technology would mean that technology is present, but not central to a students learning. An example of this would be students using the computer lab for an hour every other day. They are using it and practicing skills with technology, but it is not a main part of their day. Infusion, however, is complete use of technology for learning. Games, word processors, and research are all examples of this. When a teacher uses a computer and interactive white board to teach for most of the day, that is infusion of technology. I personally feel like more teachers are infusing technology into their teaching styles rather than including, and I would do the same. For example, in high schools teachers put up notes on the computer and interactive white board, they play videos and movies and research solutions to problems right there in front of the class. Infusion is definitely the way to go in my opinion.

Concerning digital inequalities I think I may be naive, but I believe that every child has had computer access before starting school. In this day and age, it's impossible to not have an email. Bills, receipts, Facebook, and numerous other things communicate through email. So I would think that a student would have access to a computer if their parents do, whether at home or at a public library. A lot of college libraries even have public access. So I would not let the thought that a family does not have computer access stop me from using technology in my teaching.

The book then went on to discuss one to one laptop computing. I personally have had experience with this program, as my high school took part in this. It did make learning very different and more technology oriented. Each student used their computers as textbooks, quiz and test centers, a place to turn in homework assignments, and a place to take notes during class. It was awesome, I barely picked up a pencil all year. However, I also beat the computer game Plants Vs. Zombies that first year of high school. My friends and I were also able to video chat funny faces to each other while in different classes. So really, the idea of having personal computers for each students in class is great in theory but as a student I know that I didn't always use it for the right reasons. Maybe having the computer to take home would be beneficial, but having them in class throughout the day can become a major distraction.






Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge J

With all of the technology available at our fingertips, it's a mystery to me how anything can get lost forever. The thought of a digital teacher portfolio excited me! I kept my binder from my first teaching class, however my second one was online and I don't have anything from that class. It makes me think, how can I really review what I learned if I can't go back and look at my work? This also applies for when I will start teaching. Keeping track of things I did my first year, materials I used and projects I wish we had time to do, may make the next year easier since I can just flip through all of the different things and pick out what I would like to do or maybe not do. It would also be a good thing to look back on and see how I improved as a teacher and show to future employers.

Teacher portfolios aren't the only type of portfolios that are beneficial though. Digital student portfolios excited me even more. Imagine a teacher having access to each students portfolio and adding projects and assignments to it throughout the year, and then the next year it gets passed on to the next teacher and they continue to add things to it throughout the year. Eventually in middle and high school the students themselves will have access to it and can add essays they've written, art they've created, math they've conquered, and experiments they've observed throughout their schooling. It would be so cool to look back at the end of senior year through each grade level of work and see how far they have come. High school essays and research papers may even come in handy later and would make good references if doing a similar thing in a college course. I wish I had done this, because I did a lot of cool projects in graphic design courses in high school that I don't have any more because of lost flash drives, crashed computers, and other technology failures. Having a drive of all of my work like in Google Drive would have been great at that time.

I read about the topic of democratic schools and classrooms in this chapter and was surprised by what critics said about it. I think it would be really cool for students to have a choice of what goes on with their learning. This way, they're happier about what they're doing because they chose it, and they're also learning about the democratic system daily. Critics of this say that students would choose no homework, lots of socializing, and easy problems. However, no true teacher would say "Okay so lets vote: Who wants homework tonight? Okay good who doesn't want homework tonight?" That just doesn't happen. The democratic process wouldn't happen like that, but more like "Do we want to turn in the whole chapter of homework in at once, or one assignment a night so that I can go over it and help you understand it better?" I would really like to incorporate the democratic process into my classroom, even if it is barely noticeable at first. Asking the kids if they would like to go to the bathroom before special or after special, if they want to do snack with centers or with reading. Simple things like that which allow them to feel like they are taking control of parts of their learning. It will work if the students are given two good choices to choose between rather than one good choice and one bad choice.

Digital Badge I

I really enjoy the student learning objectives that help students understand what is happening throughout the class. Knowing who is doing what when, how often and how it will be evaluated can really help calm students who get anxious about not knowing what is going to happen next. A easy way to display this would be on the white board (an older form of technology, technology nonetheless) so that it is visible throughout the entire day, which would be hard to do on the interactive board.

I can see myself using some of the lesson planning apps mentioned in chapter four, as well as some that are probably out there but not in the book. My Lesson Plan looks like one that would be really helpful, seeing as you can customize the app to fit your school districts requirements, which I thought was cool. There are a lot of times where I'll download an app for something but it's not entirely customizable so it becomes useless to me, so I'm excited to download My Lesson Plan on my iPad and start playing with it. The other apps mentioned, Today in History, Math Ref Free, and iBooks are great too because it's an easy way to just throw some math equations up for the kids to do without digging through a math textbook. One thing that apps may all have in common are their time-saving abilities, which could work wonders in the classroom. Having your lesson plan on an app or a Google drive is majorly helpful too in case you forget your lesson at home (which I can see myself doing multiple times).

Electronic grading software is something that will also help me save time in the classroom as well as at home. Between being able to take attendance and keep grades on it, it can also have the lesson plans on it as well as encourage communication between teachers. This is really cool because again, it's a time saver. If all kids got a one hundred on their assignment, you can easily enter 100 into all of the grade slots, where it would take a bit longer to enter them manually. Electronic grading software isn't a completely new technology though. My boss recently became a music teacher at an elementary school. The first week of school he showed me this paper grade book and asked "What is this and what do I do with it?" So he obviously was used to the newer way of entering grades through technology! It was definitely funny, he was quite confused when I explained it to him.

I created an online bulliten board through Padlet, and it's easily editable and you can even add pictures to each post. I used it to display objectives and the daily class schedule, as well as specific notes for each day. It is a simple thing to have up on the board when not in use, and was easy to make.

Created with Padlet

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge H

Technology is a funny word. The first thing that comes to mind when the word "technology" is said are things like iPhones and computers and tablets. But every kind of advancement is technically a piece of technology. Minimal technologies are not to be dismissed as they still have many benefits in the classroom, however multimedia technology covers a wider range of things to be done with it. Minimal technology includes things such as whiteboards, hard copies of worksheets, overhead projectors, TV's with VCRs, and handheld microphones. All useful things, but multimedia technology is more efficient. Now we have interactive whiteboards, computers with internet and software, digital projectors, digital cameras, voice recorders and surround sound. Some of these things are used daily in classrooms all around the world. Since my last attempt at embedding a Google Form into a Digital Badge assignment didn't work out so well I decided to try it again, and ask my readers what their favorite piece of technology to use in the classroom is.




I think that my favorite would be the Smart Board. Between the SmartBoard and the document camera, I believe you could change the world in a major way. Seriously! Page 222 in our textbook does an in depth description on document cameras and their benefits. One of the best things about them in my opinion is that the teacher can now write notes for the class to see without their backs being towards the class. This works really well for middle school and high school, especially math teachers. For elementary school this is a great piece of technology for multiple reasons. One would be that the teacher can work through a worksheet with the class, and another would be that the teacher can praise a student and show their good work on the board for the rest of the class to see. This could also be useful at open house and events like that.

There are countless ways that middle school students and high school students can use technology to help with their learning, but its hard to imagine elementary schoolers using the same technology. The textbook suggests using digital cameras to build up an alphabet book for kindergarten-2nd grade students. I think this could be a really cute project, maybe walking through the school with my class and a digital camera, and having them point out things that start with whatever letter of the alphabet. This could be an awesome way for them to begin to recognize the letter sounds they are learning in the real world around them.

Digital Badge G

The concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was really interesting! The three different designs of learning opened up a whole new view of teaching for me. Multiple means of representation is something that I feel like is my strength out of the three. I can easily take one objective and teach it many different ways until someone gets it and can understand it. Multiple means of expression is a cool way to think about teaching. I’m always thinking about how I can express what I know to students differently, but never really take into consideration how they can express what they know differently. The third is multiple means of engagement, is definitely something I need to work on. I feel like it would be easy to learn about each student and what they like and how to incorporate those things into their learning environment.

Other than the things they enjoy, it is important to incorporate their disabilities into consideration when incorporating technology into the classroom. There are different levels of technology to consider though, and access to them could depend on the school. Low-tech accommodations are easy and inexpensive, so they are usually the easiest option. Mid-tech accommodations include shifts in teaching and need the use of digital materials. High-tech accommodations include computer incorporation and other special technology. A few years ago my mom had a student in her class that has Downs Syndrome, and they added a touch screen computer for him to use during computer centers because he could not use the mouse.

Word clouds are an interesting concept. They are a simple way of introducing a story or piece of text to the class without just having a picture of a rabbit or a dog to introduce the story. They consist of words from the text, with the most frequently used words bigger than the rest. I think it is a good way to engage the students in a simple way. It is a good example of the UDL of multiple means of engagement.

I have made a Prezi of the things I have discussed in this blog as my digital tool. I think it is another interesting way to engage the students. When I was a student and I saw a Prezi for the first time, I was amazed! It is so much more fun than a boring powerpoint, and I would like to continue using them for my classroom.

Digital Badge F

Communicating is so important, and knowing how to do it through technology in this time period is basically mandatory. I enjoyed the topic on teachers and students communicating with technology. Towards the end of my high school career teachers started sending out reminder text messages to us about tests and projects, and it seemed weird that they were texting us but it was definitely a life saver. If I had a question about the project that I forgot all about, emailing the teacher was so easy and quick. Another way we communicated that was suggested in the book was through blogs, which was nice because my English teacher would post what we did each day on the blog so that if someone was sick they could easily catch up from home. It really made me feel like our teachers were helping us and encouraging us to succeed, which was important because I know so many people who felt like their teachers were against them and wanting them to fail their whole time in high school.

Going further into the realm of communication, I want to touch on the different types, which was cool to read about in chapter 8. Synchronous communication is immediate interaction, in real time. This includes texting, phone calls, or instant messaging. I really like this source of communication, especially for students and parents, because it is sent directly to the person, which is almost a guarantee that they saw it and received the information. This is not the case with asynchronous communication, where there is a delay in time and really no guarantee that the audience you're sending it to saw it unless they reply. This includes emailing, blogs, or discussions. I know that with blogs it's hard unless you're subscribed to it, because it's very easy to just forget to check it and then miss a homework assignment.

My third concept is about engaging students. The text book had a lot of good suggestions on how to continue to engage students outside of the classroom, after school. Some of the suggestions were; posting lesson plans, lecture notes, discussion questions, practice worksheets, ideas for further study, and student written materials. I think that the last one could be really cute with a younger classroom, like elementary school. The teacher could scan the students work as they grade it and upload it to the blog for the parent to see, and then give it all back at the end of the year to see how their child progressed throughout the school year. Another thought I had was using Google forms to ask parents questions, and I made an example one. I can't figure out how to embed the form to this blog post, so here is the link. Having all of the parent's emails in can be a good way to remind them that a new survey was posted on the blog, and to respond to it to help making their child's education more effective. I'm definitely going to be using Google forms for my class!



Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge E

Learning how to problem solve with different types of software is a great thing for me to improve on. It's really an important skill to have, and while I know that I do include technology into my daily problems, I don't know how to do that in a classroom situation. I like how the chapter started off with some steps on how to solve problems. I made a flow chart that outlined what that section of chapter seven wrote about. Starting there, with how to solve a problem, is a smart way to begin to think about how to incorporate technology into each part of the problem solving process.

 

The second thing I enjoyed about this chapter was the emphasis on all of the different software available to us, especially in this time that we live in. I think that people forget and take for granted just how awesome standard software such as Microsoft Office is. For example, not only did I type my blog in Microsoft Word but I also made my flowchart in it. There are so many things that I can do in that one program, and that's only a portion of the whole Microsoft Office package. Every day companies use software to help their days run smoothly. I remember one day I called Men's Wearhouse to make a change to a group rental, and their software was not working and all they could tell me was to call back the next day. Companies can do close to nothing without technology! Applying it to the classroom, every day teachers take attendance and enter grades into software programs, and I believe that I would try to incorporate other ways of using technology daily into my teaching routine. It's there, so why not use it!

There was one thing that really made me realize what a different world we live in compared to thirty years ago was the paragraph about Google Earth. No longer are students crowding around a globe, but now they can sit in their seats and watch as the big blue and green earth spins on the SmartBoard. Google Earth also allows teachers to focus on certain areas of the world without needing multiple paper maps to roll down from the blackboard. Those days are over! It's amazing how things have changed with the development of technology, and how some things will probably never be included in the daily classroom ever again. I think that's why learning about technology and how to naturally include it in our daily lives, both personally and in the classroom, is so very important.

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge D

Chapter 5 was interesting. I really liked the emphasis on becoming fluent in technology. I feel that many teachers are so scared or intimidated by technology in the classroom because they either don't know how to use it or fear that it is just not reliable enough and will take away from class time either fixing it or tying to get it working in the first place. Becoming really fluent in technology is important for me because if I'm hoping to one day become a very natural teacher and teach without having to have a lesson plan glued to my hand, I'm going to need to really know the ins and outs of the technology I'm using and hope to have the students using.

I found this YouTube video online that is a futuristic view of teaching and the kinds of technology that could be incorporated into every part of a lesson. This was geared towards high school classrooms but I can see the same kind of technology being used in elementary school lessons, especially the presentation methods used by the teachers. The video was a very positive look on technology in the classroom, and is appropriate for this chapter because of the confident use of technology by both the teachers and students, they are very fluent in information technology.

 

Another important advance that has developed with technology is the new way of doing research. I remember in elementary school learning about the Dewey Decimal System, and then discovering Wikipedia in middle school and never looking back. I don't know what is being taught in elementary school now in terms of research method but I surely hope the decimal system has been taken out of that lesson. Learning about how to properly research online is so much more important in my opinion. Even now in every library there is a computer that will tell you where the exact book you're looking for is. Teachers especially need to learn and utilize this new system of researching and being teaching it to students. I think that the hardest part about online researching is that it's so easy to get off track and check Facebook or play a game or even just get completely off topic and research about things that don't have anything to do with the topic you're working on. Learning how to effectively research is another useful skill that students should be introduced to at a young age, as well as how to use technology productively. 

As I was typing that last sentence I think I realized that I would enjoy that to be a focus in my classroom. Whatever technology would be used, I want my students to know that it is being used productively and that they can do the same thing. An iPad isn't just a game machine, it's a planning, calculating, presentation making, communicating machine that can be used for so many more things than your entertainment.

Another productive use of technology is the new way of taking notes. The video above showed students actively taking notes on a computer type thing, but they were able to quickly take them without missing anything it seemed like. No more erasing, or sharpening your pencil, getting distracted with doodling. Note taking with technology is very efficient now, and allows students to focus more on what they wrote down than how they wrote it as the textbook said. I think the examples of recording the lecture and attaching it to sentences in your notes in a word document is a really cool advance in technology and am definitely going to look into that for myself!

This chapter was insightful and made me feel more comfortable with the thought of using technology on a daily basis in my classroom.


Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

http://youtu.be/uZ73ZsBkcus

Digital Badge C

Photo credit to Holtsman on Flickr

I'm glad that I read the opening story for Chapter 3, because I realized that I probably would have felt equally as unprepared to answer the question from the parent, "What can you teach with technology that you cannot teach just as well without it?" Later on the same page it discussed how technology is transforming education in five major areas: critical thinking and problem solving, digital literacies, electronic communications and collaborations, creativity, and digital citizenship. The photo above shows a class with iPods with camera capabilities outside doing a project. In the same photo album there were pictures of the kids photographing many things around a park they were at, and it seems like that is something that you cannot do without technology! Coming up with fun little projects for the students to do with things as simple as cameras can really help them grow in those five major areas with the use of technology. This motivates me to think more about incorporating technology into lesson plans or transforming the lesson to fit technology usage.

The other two concepts that I enjoyed were the learning theories. Mostly Behaviorism and Constructivism. They were all interesting, but I enjoyed these two the most.

Behaviorism is interesting because it says that people learn due to changes in their environment. The textbook says that this means that learning is a process of memorizing, demonstrating and imitating. There is a study where a boy was introduced to a rat so many times and a bad thing happened each time, so from then until he died he was extremely frightened of little white rats. I think this is an interesting concept with technology because students would basically learn what the computer put in front of them, and demonstrate it and imitate it. I personally feel that learning with technology should be more entertaining and interactive, hence why I enjoyed the constructivism learning theory. Constructivism states that people interpret and build their own world around them based on the knowledge they receive. This means that student learning with computers and technology is based on their own actions and responses. I think that this encourages creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and other major areas of learning. Learning with technology should be viewed from a constructivism learning theory view point.




Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge B

At the beginning of this chapter, the author pointed out that teachers who are just starting out usually teach as they were taught. But focusing on how you can create a "lively and inspiring teaching situation" is key. I really liked the emphasis on that, because it is so true. We don't live in a time where being taught by lectures, sitting in rows is the most effective way for students to learn. Working in groups, using technology, being creative, those are the ways to really get the material across to a student! I remember sitting through lectures in AP World History, and then meeting up with a friend afterword and turning our notes into stories so that we could remember the facts better. If teachers worked from the creative perspective, I think that students would not only learn more efficiently, but be more willing to learn.

One section of the chapter asked something along the lines of, "What motivates you to use or consider using technologies in teaching?" The only major reason that I could agree with was to engage students in learning in new and exciting ways. If technology is what will get the lesson across to them in a way that makes sense, then I'm more likely to do that. With the two-year-old's I teach at church, putting a CD in and playing music and dancing and singing with them is the way to get lessons across during praise and worship. However, when we start bible story time when they first come in I find that turning out the lights and pretending like we're camping and need to be really quiet to hear the story is the way to get them focused on the story. That brings a question to my mind that I might do further research on, but why is it that when the lights are of children are more likely to calm down more than when the lights are on, even with the same instructions?I'm assuming it will have something to do with sleep, and how we sleep in the dark, but I guess I will find out!

Another section of the chapter asked "How often do you plan on using the following technologies in teaching?" I chose four from the list provided, two I would use a lot and two that I would probably not use at all. The two that I would use consistently are the computer for professional communication such as with parents and administrators as well as other teachers, and using technology for classroom presentations and demonstrations. I think those two things are easy ways to incorporate technology into my teaching career and they don't require a lot of time or frustration to set up and use on a daily basis. That would be my goal for whatever technology I use in the classroom. If it is easy to set up quickly and can be used on a daily basis without frustrations of outdated software and such then I would be very open to it. The two that i did not like were creating a class website and using word processing for student writing. I would much rather use websites and resources that are already available to me to use in my classroom than create my own website or wiki or whatever I could create. As far as word processing, I think it's a great thing for high school and college students working on long essays and research papers and thesis', but when a class of fourth graders are working on narrative stories for the FCAT, then I think they should be handwritten. Elementary and middle school are still part of a period where students are forming their own personal handwriting, and sitting them in front of a computer with Microsoft Word to write a sentence is not going to help them with that.

Overall I enjoyed this chapter much more than the first one. It encouraged creatively teaching without diverging from the lesson itself. My real focus on learning any type of teaching method is figuring out how to get it across to the students in a fun and entertaining way where they wont forget it as soon as they get on the bus, but it will be a lesson they tell their parents about.This chapter helped me figure that out I think!



Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge A

Chapter one was very interesting to read. As someone who has grown up with technology, it's almost that friend that grew up right next door to me. I watched the first iPhone come out and remember thinking how funny it was that a computer company was now turning their mp3 players into a cell phone. I grew with the iPhone and the iPad and now the iPad mini...I've always used them, and I use them naturally now. So this chapter was a little funny to read, at the end of it I had the feeling of "Well I already knew that, I'm living it!"

The first concept that I want to reflect upon is the term digital childhood. I believe that this term says more about the parents of these children than the actual children. Digital parenthood is a better term! It is very interesting that parenting styles have changed so drastically with the passing of time and growth of technology. Rather than "Go outside and play until dinner time." children now hear "Go spend an hour on the iPad until dinner is ready." I am in charge of the preschool at my church on Sunday mornings, and once a month I am in there during the entire service as a teacher. This past Sunday I was co-teaching with somebody, and since only two children were in the room at the time she sat them down at the table with her iPad and an interactive bible app set up on it. These boys were only two years old, yet figured out quite quickly how to work the app. This is amazing to me, because they show such a level of understanding of what things do on that screen, that an arrow means next page, which icon means chapter, that they can efficiently entertain themselves with the iPad without even having the knowledge of how to read. They are going to grow up with the natural knowledge of how to work a screen, which brings me to the next concept that I am going to discuss.

If someone were to ask me at any point how I would describe my "digital identity", I would not know how. My entire life has built up my digital identity, how can I separate my skills into categories like that? I don't describe my knowledge of how to drive a car or how to cook and clean as my "real life identity", those are just things that I know how to do and they make my day more efficient. I believe the same of the things I know concerning technology. I use my iPad and iPhone as calendars, cameras, to-do lists, couponing resources, homework aids, books, journals, entertainment, communication, and current event sources, among many other things. How can I label these things I do naturally as a part of a technologically efficient life as my "digital identity"? The children who grow up in a "digital childhood" will become the norm, and in two or three generations, maybe textbooks will consider it just a "childhood" again. No one will question their "digital identity", because it will soon just be considered a few out of the many things that they know how to do in life.

Even though my life revolves around technology, as a student right now I get overwhelmed when thinking about teaching a classroom of students, let alone how to incorporate technology into my lesson plans. However, I know that when the time comes it will come naturally to me, just like it is natural to download an app to help me budget my money or my time. While I was reading, I came across a quote that made me relax a little on the inside. "What can teachers and students do with technology that cannot be done without it?" I realized that first learning the content, then how to teach it, and then incorporating the use of technology is all it takes. Asking yourself after making the lesson plan "how can this be better with the use of technology?" can mean a whole world of difference in teaching styles. This also connects to the Teaching Pedagogical Content Knowledge concept in the first chapter. First content, then teaching, then technology.

The textbook makes this topic of technology seem like it's a new thing that's happening. While that may be true for people like my dad who has lived through the invention of the microwave and the first video game all the way through now with the iPhone and the ability to carry a computer in your pocket, it's nothing new to me, who at 19 has lived with this technology my entire life and have always intended to use it daily in productive manners. This class is definitely going to be interesting!



Textbook - Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Writing Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2014. http://owt.wikispaces.com/Writing+Tools