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Growth as educator

What is one way in which you grew as an educator from this class and how will you continue it?

In this class, I actually learned a lot of cool stuffs. I never know that technology can be such a great tool to be used in classroom. I know that technology cab be separated into personal use and teaching and learning purpose. For students, teachers can use technology to help them learn in a better way. Even though some teachers struggling with using technology in their curriculum, but I think using technology in classroom is a must do thing in the future. I am graduating this semester which means I can start to use technology in my future class. I think I am going to continuing doing research on educational technology tools and hope one day I will do my PhD in this area.

Underage Reflection

    Since the internet is so well-developed in the 21st century, we can't forbid our students to use the social networking services. I think what we need to do as a teacher is to teach our students how to use those social networking services properly. I think underage students using social networking services has been an issue for a while. I remembered when I was about 13 or 14, I had curious on a lot of things, that time was when the internet started to become more popular. All I wanted to do after school was browsing the internet. Of course, there were something as an underage students should not see. But somehow I did, because it was an ad poped out when I was searching for something funny.
    Nowadays, since Facebook is so popular, everyone literally has an account. But I think there is a age rule so that they can prevent underage students to sign up? Even so, who will actually follow that rule? We all know that teenagers like to break the rule and challendge it. So, how can we prevent this happen? I think we have to start from the basics. I think we can create some mini lessons to teach our students how to use social networking services properly, not just simply tell them "you can't do this" or "don't do this". Instead, we should give them some reasons why they shouldn't do that.

Reflection on teaching OR project

Did you learn about your teaching style in the OR project? - Discuss your teaching strengths and weaknesses from this on blog.

    After teaching technology to someone for this project, I think I have a different view of my teaching style. Usually I think teaching is really not a hard thing to do when I was teaching back at home. I think I am really good at teaching subject such as math, Chinese, and English to a group of students. But I have learned a lot from teaching someone how to use technology. I think it was a bit hard for me to do it when I was preparing for this project. I could teach myself how to use a technology pretty easy and I learn fast. When I was creating the handout, I found it was hard for me to write steps for the technology I was going to teach because I didn't if the handout I made was understandable for someone. 
    I think my strengths of teaching are: I can deal with a group of students and help them with their questions in class, create good activities in class for different subjects, deal with different situations which may happen in a sudden during class. Those are things I can do really well when I am teaching. My weaknesses of teaching are: I don't really to teach younger age students like first and second graders, because I don't which subject is too easy and which is too hard for them, and sometimes I have a hard time to understand students' questions in class.  
    Overall, I think I learned a lot from this project. This project helped me to make sure my teaching style is good for people. I think teaching how to use technology is way different from teaching subjects such as math in school because you need to self-taught yourself and do a lot of research. There is no teacher manual for you to use in teaching technologies especially when the technology you are going to teach is really new. 

Professional Development Plan

Standard 2: Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments.

1.      Skill I have: I already knew how to use some famous technology tools to teach in class such as Prezi.

2.      Need: I will need to make my skills toward using Prezi more effective, and also need to learn how to use Prezi to incorporate with smart board or interactive whiteboard. And then I need to learn how to use prezi as an assessment tool to evaluate students’ work.

3.      Short Term Plan: I will start to practice to use Prezi more and get familiar with its functions and practice how to use it to integrate with smart board or interactive whiteboard. I think I can finish this process by the end of this semester.

4.      Long Term Plan: I will have to learn and practice how to use Prezi to do evaluation, and make a report to discuss how Prezi can be an assessment tool for teachers to use in class. I think will start to work on that next semester.

5.      Goal: I think I will need to create a workshop for teachers to use Prezi to teach and evaluate. I also think that teachers’ perspectives on this workshop can help me to determine whether Prezi can be a tool to teach and assess or not.

Teaching with Technology project

    I am going to teach how to use apps for Chinese learning on iPad, and also how to incorporate iPad with Smartboard. Those apps I have been playing with are all free on iTunes, anyone who is interesting in learning Chinese is easy to use. When someone who is completely new to Chinese, those apps I chose will be a good start. Normally, when someone is learning Chinese, the difficult parts are pronunciation and writing Chinese words. Those apps I chose is focusing on Chinese word writing and how to pronounce Chinese word correctly.
    I am still processing how to use those apps to teach someone with iPad, but I think it should be really good. I was actually surprised by these apps, I wish I could have know how to use those language learning apps when I was learning English. It is amazing when I was using iPad to find those apps, there are tons of apps provided on iTunes that you can download either for free or pay. Since my project focus is on free apps, so I will just teach how to use those free apps. It is glad to know that there are a lot of people are trying to learn Chinese. I am looking forward to how my work in class soon!

Ertmer & Leftwich

    This article talks about teacher technology change. In this 21st century, technology integration is important for learners. The authors suggest that it is no longer appropriate for teachers with low-level technology skills to meet the needs of new learners. Also, in this article, the authors discuss four different variables that change teacher technology use (knowledge, confidence, beliefs and culture).
    For knowledge, the authors suggest that teachers need to broaden their conception of good teaching to include ideas that teaching is effective when we combine technology. Also, knowing how to use hardware and software is not enough for teachers to use technology effectively. In order to use technology to support their teaching, teachers need to know the knowledge of technology, not just knowing how to use it but knowing how to incorporate into classroom.
     For self-efficacy (confidence), the authors suggest that self-efficacy may be more important than skills and knowledge among teachers who use technology into curriculum. Teachers' confidence plays a key role when they are incorporating technology into classroom. So does beliefs. Also, the culture press has been addressed in this article. The authors indicate that culture pressure can be a positive factor to affect teachers to integrate technology into classroom.
    I think this article points out the important ideas about the change of teachers to use technology into classroom. I like the authors discuss into four different categories so that I can have a more clear idea. Because I am doing my graduation project about integrating technology to support vocabulary development in classroom, so I found it really easy to understand for me. I do think as a teacher we need to keep learning new technology, but time management is always the concern, I don't think we need to learn every single one of them but just the one is commonly used in the classroom. And I think practicing how to use new technology before you incorporating in your class is really important. You don't really want to waste your time figuring out the new technology in class. I have to admit, it is not an easy job, but as a teacher, we somehow need to do it. According to Hansen (2008), teachers should consider ICT as an assisting tool, it may never replace the role of teacher in a classroom, but those who use technology may replace those who don’t.
 

Improve my technology skill

I think I am not 100% a technology person, but I like to try new things. I remembered when iPhone first came out, I have no idea why Apple made this phone because back in that time, people are using cellphones as communicating tools with only text and phone calls. But few years later, smartphones became the popular phone that everyone needs to have one, so from that time I started to play with it. I think technology is developing too fast we can not always use the fresh tool in class but we can definitely try something is new for us. I am doing my graduation project now, so I have to try a lot of technology tools to use in the classroom. So, I did a lot of researches trying to find some good ones that can help my students to learn vocabulary. And I found out it is really difficult. I have to say that at the first time I didn't think using technology would be a difficult thing, but after I taught a few lessons, I think it is not that easy. The way I can improve my technology skills is trying to find a couple one that I think it's useful and has a great future in education setting then just practice over and over again until I feel comfortable to use it in class. Of course, when new technology comes out, I will definitely try it out!