As I write this I feel a slight tinge of sadness, as the journey over this semester has been an enlightening and rewarding experience. When I initially started this course I did not believe that I would learn a great deal as I thought I was pretty up to date with technology. But throughout this semester my knowledge about technology has grown immensely and my ideas as to the role of technology in the classroom have shifted immensely. Throughout the semester I was introduced to and became skilled in the art of blogging, tweeting, podcasting and making digital stories .I have learnt about many different theories of learning, in particular two theories left an impact on me and will influence my methods of teaching in the future. These theories were Jonassens Meaningful Learning and Paperts Constructionism. Through undertaking practicum with a kindergarten class I had a surreal experience when I finally realised how much technology has changed in such a short period of time and how it has changed the teaching profession and us as individuals. I blogged about my practum experience and how I was amazed at how teaching had changed e.g. that technology has made teaching somewhat different compared to when i was at school and that it has made learning more exciting for children. After coming back from prac I was even more eager to learn in this class, as I finally understood how important it is for my knowledge of technology to be up to date as possible as technology is so present in schools.I immersed myself in the literature and blogged about a very valuable piece of literature called Too Cool for School? No Way! by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler. This article left an impact on me as it highlighted how we must not be scared to introduce cools gadgets e.g. Ipods, Iphones and Ipads into the classroom, that they can be cool and educational at the same time. Another key learning experience post prac was a session with Glynnis Jones on Cyber Safety. I believe this tutorial was so important for future teachers as I believe it will be our responsibility in the future to protect our students from the dangers of the internet especially if we will be there advocating and promoting the use of technology in the classroom. Another important moment this semester was reading a fantastic blog post by my fellow peer Melissa Gray. Melissa wrote about an article she had read in the Sunday Morning Herald.The blog post focused on a teacher who had introduced blogging into her classroom to connect wth other cultures around the world. I found this to be very fascinating as it takes on a whole new level of having penpals in the classroom and this is an idea that I would love to incorporate into my future classroom. You can view the article here, Melissa's original blog post here and my response here. The final point I will make that I have learnt this semester is that my learning journey is not over, but infact just beginning. On my journey to becoming a teacher I will be working hard to be constantly keeping up-to-date with the never ending advances in technology and their potential use in the classroom.PLEASE NOTE: To see the video in better quality please press on the following link:
