Personal Technology Plan

Vision for Educational Technology

Teaching digital literacy, and the skills to utilize technology is important for my students to learn to survive in a technology-based society. It is a crucial part of 21st century learning.  As an educator, it is my responsibility to make sure that I am thoughtfully integrating technology into my lessons. In order to be able to encourage confidence in my students’ abilities to use the Internet, communicating on the web, digital media, and computer ethics.

According to the article, Why Integrate Technology into the Curriculum, “Technology also changes the way we teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assesses student understanding through multiple means.” By productively infusing technology in my curriculum, my role as an educator grows into an advisor, publisher, graphic artist, and coach. By successfully using technology I can incorporate several different learning styles in one lesson. This makes my teaching more meaningful and knowledge based.

Technology allows students to be an active part of their learning process. In my classroom technology creates hands on, interactive, collaborative, project, or game based–learning.  These learning processes allow students to connect with the subject being taught. By creating opportunities for students to connect with what they are learning students become more intrinsically motivated to learn. The article, Student Movitivation to Learn, by Linda S. Lumsden states that, “When intrinsically motivated, students tend to employ strategies that demand more effort and that enable them to process information more deeply.” This creates an environment for deep meaning learning to happen.

Looking into the future, I know that the technology skills students are going to need will grow and change.  My goal is to regularly educate myself on recent technologies. I plan to continually use my Personal Learning Network to keep my knowledge recent and relevant to my students. I am passionate about enhancing education with technology tools and will continue to educate myself on new ways achieve this objective.

In most schools districts budget cuts have been made, and schools do not have a lot of extra money to spend. Although technology is often viewed as an expensive tool, there are many ways that it can be used to be budget friendly. Schools can use free resources such as moodle, cloud computing resources, free website creation hosts, educational games, and numerous other Web 2.0 free tools. These can all reduce the expenses of licensed software/storage without eliminating any educational resources for the students.



Classroom Technology

In my classroom I use Photo Shop Elements to teach students graphic design skills. I focus on teaching students creativity, visual composition, and art theory in each project.  Another main focus is formulating unique and original ideas that would grab the audiences’ attention. My class learns the basic Photo Shop toolbar, filters and a few more complex tools. The lessons created in Photo Shop provide students an idea of real jobs a graphic designer may work on in their career.

To create videos we use Windows Movie Maker and Animoto.  We use Windows Movie Maker to create short videos with characters the students have created and altered in Photo Shop. It turns out to look like a comic strip with voice and sound in the background. This allows students to become familiar with transitions, effects, and voiceovers. The second video tool we use is Animoto.  Animoto creates more of a music video type of presentation. Students upload all of the work they have done in the course and create a portfolio using this program.

In my classroom we also use Google Docs to share documents with each other. I share rubrics for lesson with students on Google docs. In my WebQuest students used Google Docs to gain information on different websites and collect information with their groups.  We also used Google Docs to store our projects because students are only provided a small amount of network storage space by the school.

We also use Microsoft word and Power Point to type up papers and create presentations. In my WebQuest, students collected information on an art career and put the information together in an exciting and informational presentation. They learn tools and are given resources on how to take their Power Points to the next level.

 

Personal Growth Plan

I will be continually educating myself as I complete my last year of my Masters in Educational Technology at Michigan State University.  After I have completed my Masters Degree, I will to use my knowledge of Personal Learning Networks and social Networking to maintain my technology skills and keep up with the latest trends. 

Presently, I feel as though I am overflowing with ideas on new ways to use technology to enhance my teaching.  Over the next year I plan to incorporate many more Web 2.0 resources into my teaching. On the website Cool Tools for Schools, there is an abundance of creativity tools I will incorporate into my teachings this year.  

I will be educating my students on tools they can use at home to make creative pieces of artwork. Some of the tools I will be using are Aviary, Picnik, and Psykopaint. These are all free resources students can use at home. Students are often discouraged when they find out how expensive Photo Shop is to own on there own computer. These tools will allow them to create unique pieces of artwork in there homes at no additional cost.

This year, I will also be applying for grants to gain the supplies needed to create Stop Motion and Common Craft Instructional videos. By gaining a set of Flip camcorders, webcams, tripods, and microphones, my students will be able to explore many different aspects of learning strategies, and technologies. I am excited to explore where these tools can take us.

Overall, I would like to see my educational use of technology grow. I want to share with my students the technology tools that have made such an impact on my educational experience, in hope that it will have a lasting effect on them.  I hope to continue to find ways to use technology as an educational tool create, explore, and share with my students.