Final Course Reflection

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time within this class. I learned so many new things concerning technology that I know will benefit me in my future as an elementary teacher. This class offers important lessons such as how to incorporate technology into the classroom. From day one I have learned something new and often things that I have never even heard of, as well as do things that I have never had to do before. I came into this class with some knowledge of technology but not so much knowledge on how important roles technology play in education and how to use it properly to help with teaching.

                IT 365 has definitely helped improve my technology skills in very many ways. Coming into this class I thought I had quite a lot of technology knowledge but I am leaving this class with so much more. Every assignment we did in this class contains a valuable lessons and beneficial information for my future career. I learned so much on how important the NETS-T standards are and their importance. As stated in the syllabus for this class, “this course provides a foundation of knowledge about diversity issues and the resulting implications for technology implementation in classroom instruction. IT 365 intends to expand the students’ understanding of (a) teaching as a profession and (b) ways to meet the needs of diverse populations.”  

                There were eight key assignments within this class. These assignments ranged from creating a concept map, creating our own digital movie, to learning how to adapt lesson plans to accommodate student’s needs, to creating a blogfolio and the list goes on. After completing this class I now understand how important it is for teachers any educator to incorporate technology within their teachings. Technology, when used properly, is such a wonderful thing. Technology can benefit almost every area of education including simple areas such as just keeping in contact with student’s parents. The resources that it provides are endless. I know that in my future as an elementary teacher I will without a doubt use technology within my classroom. I will use it to make lesson plans, activities, assignments, websites, so on and so forth. 

Assistive Technology (link to the PowerPoint)

This assignment, the Assistive Technology assignment, is primarily taught to the class to help future teacher learn how to incorporate adjustments and modifying techniques into lessons and the classroom for students with almost any sort of disability. It is very important for each and every student to be able to engage in every aspect within the classroom as possible. This assignment helps teach future teachers all sorts of techniques and tricks to do so.

                We explored accessibility features in Windows. We learned what to do if we ever have a student in class who is a low vision computer user, what to do if we ever have a student in our class that has a physical disability that makes it easy for him or her  to accidentally engage a computer key setting, as well as what to do if we ever have a student in our class that has a mild hearing impairment and how to accommodate their needs. This assignment corresponds with the 4^th point of the NETS-T standards. This is a very good assignment for future teacher and I really enjoyed it. 

Assistive Technology Power Point

Social, Ethical, and Legal Issues (Turnitin; link to the Revised version only)

The Turnitin assignment for this course had two parts. For the first part of this assignment the class had to type a report talking about the social, ethical, legal, and human issues of technology all in just one page. We were giving a list of questions relating to the topics and we had to answer all of the questions within our report. The easy part concerning the first part of the Turnitin assignment was that we could copy all of the information we needed to answer the questions from the resources and websites provided by our instructor. Basically we had to plagiarize the report on purpose. The last step in part one was to submit the report into Turnitin.com.

                The second part of the Turnitin assignment was very similar to the first part. The only big difference was that this time instead of copying and pasting the information gathered from the given websites, we had to actually type it in our own words; the way it should properly be written instead of plagiarizing. When finished answering the questions we had to again submit the report into Turnitin.com and to receive an acceptable number of plagiarism. The first part should have been scored very high as far as plagiarism while the second should have been scored very low. This assignment corresponds with the 4^th portion of the NETS-T standard. I know that if I am going to be teacher in middle or high I will use Turnitin often to check for plagiarism and help prepare my students for their future in school.   

Turnitin Assignment

Web site (link to GoogleSites)

The web site assignment for this class was very interesting and easy to create.  The work was a bit tedious because some of the computers were really slow, perhaps because everyone was using the same thing. We had to create a teacher website as if we were already in our teaching careers. We had to choose appropriate background and color schemes. Banners and clipart images were required on all pages. Contact information was required at the bottom of the website and must also include the e-mail link, page’s URL, date of last update, and school’s name on the bottom of each Web page. Our website had to include a home page, course information page, personal page, and web resources page. The NETS-T standards that this assignment represents are numbers 1,2, and 3. I know I will use the knowledge and skills I have gained from this assignment in my future as an elementary school teacher to keep in touch and inform students as well as my student’s parents. 

Ms. Miller's Teaching Site

Movie Story (link to Windows Movie Maker)

Making the movie for the movie story assignment was very easy and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire assignment. I decided to do my movie on my family. My family and I are very close so I figured it would be enjoyable to make a movie about them. I even showed my family my movie of them and they all loved it and were very impressed. The movie maker software was super easy to work with and made everything a breeze in creating the movie. I loved looking for all of the pictures and getting to see some that I had forgotten about and also just remembering some the great moments that we have all shared together. I can definitely see myself using what I have learned from this assignment in my future and also using movie maker gain. The movie story assignment corresponds with two of the NETS-T standards; #1 and #2. They are “Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity” and “Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments.”

GoogleGroups and Google Drive

For this assignment our class was divided up into different groups. Each group had to come up with a group name and my group decided to be called Super Cute. We had to work together with this assignment and do various different activities. We had to all choose one chapter and come up with one question related to the chapter we chose. I chose chapter seven because it was the one that I used for my concept mapping assignment that we had previously in the semester. We each had to then answer three questions that our fellow group members created for us. We had to all participate in writing a story within Google Drive. One person had to start the story and the rest of us went in order finishing the story. We also had to create a six slide slideshow related to our chapter and provide information from the chapter. This assignment corresponded with #1, #2, and #3 of the NETS-T standards.

 

Slide Show Presentation for Chapter 7

Web tools (link to the Storybird, Wordle, Rubric, and Trackstar)

                The web tools assignment for this course was a bit long but despite the work I still enjoyed it. My favorite part of this assignment was creating my on Storybird. I thought the entire thing was so cool and interesting. I could literally just go on and on looking through all of the picture options thinking of different stories to go along with the illustrations. It was quite difficult to finally choose just one. I can definitely see myself using Storybird in my future as an elementary teacher. I enjoyed the Wordle as well. I decided to do my worlde on U.S states. The rubric was not so bad either because it really gave me a feel of how I will use them in my future as a teacher. This assignment corresponds to #1, #2, and #3 of the standards of the NETS-T standard.

My Wordle
My Storybird

Concept Map Reflection
I must say the concept mapping assignment for this class was by far my most favorite of them all. A simple reason as to why I believe I liked it so much is because I have always enjoyed anything that deals with inserting and using pictures or any form of decorating. I liked the Inspiration software that we had to download as well. It was very easy to use and I caught on rather quickly. The tools and all of the options it offered was easy to use to create my concept map. I chose to do my map on chapter 7, Digital Images and found what I learned interesting. I can definitely see myself using what I have learned from this assignment in my future. The concept mapping assignment corresponds with three of the NETS-T standards: #1, #2, and #3. “Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity” is the first NETS-T standard, “Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments” is the second, and “Model Digital-Age Work and Learning” is the third standard. This assignment required me to show off what I know and what I learned from the chapter I chose in a very fun way. The concept mapping assignment is a great way to teach children. It allows the teacher to provide a uniquely created map to the class that will hold the students’ attention with pictures and relations.

To view my concept map for chapter 7 Digital Images, click here