Looking Back, Yet Moving Forward

As I reread my past posts, I can see how I am developing as a teacher. I have changed form someone who mostly used technology for school and socially into someone who knows ways to utilize technology to aid me professionally. Each project and assignment has brought something different to the table and I had the opportunity to learn from experts in the field and my colleagues.

Some of the highlights of our assignments and what I learned: 

Bonk Presentation - for my particular chapter,  I learned that free is not as free as we think it is.
My BLOG - I learned how a blog helps to communicate with others easily and a way to keep parents and students informed of what's going on in my classroom.  I learned the basic ins and outs of blogging and about RSS feeds. 
Infographic - I learned how to use Glogster! I now consider it a way to visually present information and focus on the main ideas. I could see students using an infographic for numerous assignments across all subjects.  
Webliography - I learned how important it is for teachers to work together to research different web resources and that in educating each other, we are working smarter. There are many, many amazing resources out there (some for free) that teachers can use in and out of the classroom. Some of them were: IPEVO, Three Ring, Educreations, Toontastic
SMARTboard lesson - I can actually use the SMARTboard (thanks Dr. Gleason!). I learned to really work with the interactive technology and ways to incorporate it into regular classroom instruction. By filming and editing the lesson, I learned more about iMovie and loading videos on YouTube. By working with my colleagues as a student in their lesson videos, I learned about our different teaching styles and ways I could use their ideas to help make myself a better teacher. 
Flat Classroom Proposal - I learned about the Flat Classroom Project and what it takes to write and pitch a proposal. Through collaborating with my colleagues to develop and present our project, I learned that going in for a pitch as a team is great because there is a built in support system for the idea. I also learned to think about your project from all angles you can think of and then some, because the administration can ask anything! This project and proposal made me think about innovative ways to incorporate technology and 21st century skills in the classroom. I thought about how I would want to connect students to other students across the country and world for them to see that we are not so different after all.  

Thinking about the work I have done in this short amount of time, I want to use what I have learned as I move forward into the next set of classes in the program and leading up to my student teaching internship.

The bottom line: I have learned so much about technology and education through this course. As I think about my future as an educator and the future of technology in education, I am reminded of a pretty famous quote from Walt Disney:

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We KEEP MOVING FORWARD, opening up new doors and doing new things because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."