Reflection Post

Throughout this semester I found this class to have the most relevant information that I will use as a student and a future teacher. Although I did not put my best efforts towards this class, I will always remember the information that I absorbed throughout these few months. When I first signed up for this class, I was unaware of all the different roles technology can play. When I first think of technology I think of email, texting, calling, internet, and social media but there is so much more to technology than just that. There are so many opportunities for students and teachers through technology. There are tools that help students learn math, science, history, language arts but then there are websites/tools that help teachers create lesson plans or help teachers communicate with other professionals. Due to this, education will never get boring and there will always be a way to help involve students into their studies. I never realized this until I entered this class and read the textbook. As an average college students, some paragraphs were drowning while others were so interesting. However, at every single chapter there were Web 2.0 Tool boxes that were listed with all sorts of tools and websites that were associated to that chapter. I also found joy in learning about all the different Web 2.0 tools and searching them on the web. Every single chapter amazed me on how many Web 2.0 tools there are and not a single tool disappointed me. Not only did the tools amaze me but so did our discussions in class. The teacher related the information so clearly that everyone could understand and she would also demonstrate what she was talking about. For instance, when our class first heard about Kahoot our teacher would play Kahoot with us so we could all understand what the online game actually did. Reading something in the textbook is completely different than actually doing it. Another example is when we all did a scavenger hunt with a compass, she explained how this activity can work for any subject such as math, geography, or even science. Whenever the teacher demonstrated such activities it opened my mind and eyes to how much teachers have access too. The sky is the limit with technology and the more creative teachers are with educational technology, the better. The textbook also talked about how students in todays age have grown up in technology, so taking technology away from them in education is only hurting their learning.

I felt that this class gave me great outcomes especially communication, critical thinking, technology/information management, and global socio-cultural responsibility. Through the semester the entire class as well as the teacher communicated effectively using standard English written and oral. Our assignments were described and written in English and our discussions as well as class time were spoken in English. We also used critical thinking in EME2040 because we learned how to evaluate effectively. Our teacher taught us how to make rubrics for evaluation and we used rubrics in our class for our evaluation. We learned how to proper read rubrics and how to proper evaluate our students. We had three assignments this semester that had association with rubrics: Webquest, Lesson Plan, and Website Evaluation, Critique, and Rubric. We used Technology/Informational Management throughout this entire semester but used Delicious to organize information from a variety of sources. We also incorporated Global socio-cultural responsibility by learning about all the different web tools that can help in a diverse classroom. We specifically did one assignment that was a Webquest on different learning disabilities that made me realize not only is there a bunch of tools and websites that help students but also students with learning disabilities.

All in all, this class was beyond helpful for now and later. Although there was a bunch of work in this class, it was for a great purpose.

Below is a wonderful video on Web 2.0 Tools

Resources:
Textbook - Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc

Web 2.0 Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved April 30, 2015, from http://web2014.discoveryeducation.com/web20tools.cfm