Week 5 Reflection

My biggest "Aha!" moments this semester were amazingly from the first week. When we read the Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants article, my eyes finally opened to the reality of education and how it is changing. Through developing my philosophy I have really been able to center my focus on instruction and what ways are developmentally appropriate for my incoming students and what is going to be most beneficial to their learning process, as well as mine. I still see the importance in many of the philosophies, but I definitely think that learning needs to be student centered, with strong teacher guidance.

I plan on adapting as many of my lessons as I can to incorporate more technological portions of our new age into learning. I have to keep in mind that our students are not going to fully grasp and understand a concept by merely "sitting and getting" or even merely participating in "hands on" activities. I will need to take the conceptual knowledge needed and effectively merge it will real-world applications and those hands on experiences that create background knowledge and I now see that technology is the key to creating the bridge to connect each of those necessities to learning. I am so excited to get back into the classroom this year and "see" the how the effective use of technology will impact my classroom.

This course has really cemented in mind the hold that technology has on our society and how I need to infuse my teaching with the language my students are learning in, as foreign as it may be.

Week 4 Reflection

When answering the questions you posed to us I found myself awed, I can not count how many times I've opened a word document simply to type the name of a song I wanted to remember to download later and saved it to my desktop of my laptop so I'd see it. I've definitely turned my "remembering" off, I have my husband's number, my parents' numbers, and my numbers memorized, that's it. I recently replaced my iphone and didn't have all my contacts backed up, I felt so lost without my numbers and e-mail addresses. I go to all my meetings with my cellphone so I can create a note if I need to, save a date to my calendar etc. I'm CONSTANTLY connected either via the internet, or though my phone, which is always with me. I often find myself, watching TV, working on something, and switching back and forth to play an online game, or check status updates etc. This was a huge AHA for me while reading this week's article. I often play video games, often consuming so much more of my time than I truly should allot to it, i.e. Farmville, Farmtown, Treasure Island, Frontierville, Cafe World, Mafia Wars, etc.

After reading the article I would say that I fall mostly into the College Students or Millenials category, though my age would most likely classify me in another category. I found myself agreeing with many of the things I read such as identifying with my parents' values and feel close to them, I'm fascinated by new technologies, and my daily life is intertwined with numerous extra curricular activities.

We need to adapt our teaching styles to ones that are quicker, more technologically intertwined and offer variety and choice. Our students, now, are used to choice in decision making, are used to being able to go "Google" the answer to a question that pops into their heads etc. We have to make ourselves teachers that use best practices and allow our students to learn in their most effective learning styles. Which will require us to become "fluent" in their language of technology.