Chapter 2

Throughout the classes that I have taken in the MET program I have read the assigned text, lectures, and links and have gotten excited about new ideas that I could implement in my classroom. Then reality hits and I remember that everything that is in any way related to a blog or forum is blocked on all school computers. This was especially frustrating when going back to school this fall and finding that every project, wiki, blog, etc. that I created over the last 3 months is not accessible to me and my students. Darn those firewalls!

Chapter two gave me a lot of new ideas and inspiration to creating new projects and recreating some of the projects or activities that I already do with my students. The bonus is that most of the productivity tools are "the software applications that are commonly found in an office suite" (Pearson, p.30), visualization and multimedia tools, and educational software will not be blocked by the firewall. Yay! I cannot wait to help my students create their stories with PowerPoint this year. Now to find a way to use some of those Internet and communication tools!

Expectations

I hope to never be accused of being “set in my ways” or to have a teaching style that is “old fashioned.” Technology is the future of education and it is important to stay ahead of the game. I have always been interested in technology and I am always trying to find new ways to use it in my classroom. It helps to keep the iGeneration learners, who are always plugged into something, engaged and interested in what they are learning.

I feel that I do a pretty good job of using the resources that I have to integrate technology into my classroom, but I am hoping to learn new ways to make what I have even more valuable and to be able to use it more effectively in reading and writing. I’m the go-to technology person in my building and usually the first teacher to “try” something new. Being the first to learn how to use something gives my students an advantage over students in the other classes. The knowledge and skills that I obtain in this course will help me and my students to stay ahead of the game in reading and writing through technology.

I am excited about the tools we are going to learn to use through this class. I look forward to digging deeper into the resources that the Pearson book has to support reading and writing and learning how to use them. "The most profound technologies are those that disappear-they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" (Solution Tree). I found this interesting because some of the technologies that the students don't even notice are the "profound" technologies that weren't always around. Some of our students, as well as some of us, could never imagine life without them!