To begin I just want to say how valuable this course was for me as a future educator. I came in green to the ideas of video creating, screen capture, and assessment. This first semester in the program has been a great stepping stone for me to dive in to the objectives needed to be learned to do my job to the utmost of my ability. My three biggest takeaways from this course are: 1) the importance of technology for classroom engagement, 2) being aware of the amount of resources at our disposal, and 3) the diversity at which how students retain knowledge. To elaborate on this, I don’t remember much technology being used in high school 10 years ago when I attended. Also, cell phones weren’t as main stream yet which kept the distractions down from the level they’re at today. With that said, keeping students engaged in content with the use of media platforms seems to be at a premium in education today. The resources at hand are beyond anything I thought possible for educators. Whether it be through the school system itself such as ALEX, or it be through Pinterest or even teacherspayteacher.com. There are numerous ways to expand our variety in how to help our kids learn. Then there was the different learning theories and methods at which to go about teaching the necessary standards. Whether it being Web 2.0 or 3.0, the students will most certainly have a vast difference in retain on the individual level with respect to which is used. As human beings we’re all so unique. This course has given a look at how relevant this is in education.
As nerve wracking as it was at the time my favorite assignment has ended up being the video creation. It took a level of comfort to evaluate myself speaking and how I wanted to introduce myself. The fact that I took public speaking many moons definitely was a eye opener and it showed me how important these presenting skills were to being a teacher. Then to add on to this the iMovie app was so easy to edit. It was basically a start to show that all these things you think take a lot of time to do and polish are much more accessible now. This could be used for subs when a day is missed as easy as making a video and attaching it to a link of the schools “Sakai like” site engage. I saw much of this video creation tool use in classrooms during observation and I completely understand why after producing my own.
So, to answer the question, “what are two ways I plan on implementing technology in my class then what I would have done prior to taking this course?”. I had never seen moodlecloud before even though I understand the concept is used in many ways. So without deep diving into this I would say this would be a useful tool for study guides for students. I would suggest some sort of technique to avoid divide and conquer or even some students in groups not participating. But overall the idea of safe shared knowledge is amazing to have. I would have never considered using things such as Powtoons as attention grabbers before this class. While creating my cartoon for that weeks assignment the idea just seemed so cool to have for rules and such to post examples using this. Also, I would of course thought of using PowerPoint, but I had never been introduced to screen-casting before. The fact that I could break down a lesson for subs or pre-make commentary for my presentations is a very useful tool to have my disposal. Even using it and posting my lessons on the site for students who are absent can give them the ability to not get far behind saving time in class for instruction. Ever since observing the screen-cast option I’ve used it several times to break down film for players post practice.
To conclude I just want to thank you Dr. Gaston for the tools that have been left for our disposal. Of course I won’t be able to implement all of these at once or maybe not even in my career, but just having the know how that there are always more options out there for the betterment of students is peace of mind.
BrandonB630 