Technology Conclusion

1. At the beginning of this course, you were asked to assess your present strengths and weaknesses in technology. Has your assessment changed? If so, how?

 At the beginning of the summer, I knew nothing about technology.  Teachers would see me at school and say, "You're young, you know how to do computers.  I need your help with technology."  I would cringe at the though of potential technology questions and politely let them know I really did not know that much.  Now, I feel like a kid in a candy shop.  I have been introduced to all of these web 2.0 tools and have had practice using them.  I am excited to go back to school and share these technologies with the teachers and implement them into our school library.  I cannot wait to collaborate with our technology teacher and possibly work on some projects together.  I no longer have to despise the word technology.  My eyes have been opened to the great world of technology.

     2.  How do you plan to keep up with new innovations in technology once you have completed your classes at UNT?

I plan to keep up with new technologies through utilizing several of the tools that have been shown to me.  Through blog sites and wiki sites, I can search for information using key words such as technology and web 2.0 tools.  I can also use delicious to see sites that users have tagged pertaining to technology.  I plan to stay actively engaged and involved with technology so I won't fall behind.  

     3.  What specific plans do you have for implementing technology in an educational setting as a result of what you have learned in 5720?

Unfortunately, I do not have a whole lot of time with classes or computer access in the library; however, I do plan to implement these new technologies.  I plan to offer a training in the library to introduce these new technologies to teachers.  I am going to encourage them to let their kids use these tools for projects.  The teachers at my school are stuck on using tri boards for presentations but maybe this will motivate them to try something different.  The students projects could be displayed on the televisions throughout the building.

I also plan to work with the technology teacher.  I was thinking we could do a book trailer project where the kids write and prepare the book trailer in library and film it in computer lab. 

My school participates each year in a competition called Name That Book.  The students read 30 books are then are quizzed over quotes from the book.  I would like to start a wiki where they can discuss the books as they read and I could post quotes and they could discuss which book they thought it was from and why.  I could have a quote of the day.

I would also like to start a book club wiki for fifth graders.  I cannot wait to see what this year has in store!