Reflections

This course has helped me refine my skills in certain technological areas. Being born during the early 1980’s I can be considered a Digital Native and grew up with a lot of technology.  I have been blogging, have created wiki’s and podcasts in the past, and this course helped me recall some of the skills that I have previously learned for fun when I was an undergraduate.  These skills are useful and now I feel confident in implementing them in my Spanish classroom. 

This course has emphasized something that my mother told me a long time ago, that is the importance of being a life-long learner.  Being a teacher has changed so much in my lifetime just like technology.  As technology changes teachers need to be aware of it to reach new learners in the classroom.  The new areas of teaching and learning are always changing and therefore it is important for me as a professional teacher to keep learning to be the fully prepared to teach new learners.

There are some things that are important for me to be teacher-centered in the foreign language classroom in order to build a solid foundation of learning for the students. Once that foundation is built the transition into learner-centered.  The process of being leaner-centered has a great deal of benefits where I as the teacher can guide the students to finding their way in learning a new language.  Being learner-centered the students will have the ability to access all kinds of different resources to find answers and give them a greater sense of accomplishment.
 

In being a life-long learner I will always look for new and better ways to teach children.  There is always a different way that can be used to be more effective when teaching.  There a so many new technologies and new technological advances that I can learn to implement into my classroom.  These are things that I can use to increase student interest and involvement as opposed to running a traditional classroom.  By being aware of many different ideas I can have a class that is constantly fresh and keeps student interest by not becoming stale.
 

There are two technological goals that I would like to have implemented in the next two school years; one would be for a classroom set of laptop computers and for there to be wireless internet access in my classroom.  The advantages of each student having access to a computer while in my class would be great so that I would not have to take them to and reserve the computer lab.  There are so many wonderful things that can be done using the computer with learning a new language.  I would have the ability to record a podcast of a story or an assignment in Spanish and then have the students listen to it on their own computer to complete the task at hand working at their own pace.  The next thing is having wireless internet access in the classroom as opposed to a direct line.  Being wireless there would be a lot less clutter from all of the different cords and such that would need to be present to connect everything otherwise.  There are of course many obstacles from getting these implemented, but most relevant is the availability of funds.  I have already done a lot of research about buying a classroom set of computers from the city Public School system, and have given my finding to a union grant writer to try and find grant money to pay for this.  We were able to find someone who was willing to give the district grant money for the computers, but unfortunately we were unable to get that money because they stipulated that we buy the computers from a certain company and the district was contractually obligated to buy from another company.   I will continue to search for different companies that may be willing to donate older computers to the classroom and hopefully when the contract is done we can still receive the grant money that has already been found.

Looking back to week one and how much I have progressed throughout this course fills me with some pride.  I have a new confidence to use technology in my class instead of shying away from it.  I feel that there is a sense of not implementing technology because it may be difficult to figure out a starting point for using it.  From the checklist from week one thing that I can change is the use of technology across the curriculum.  I can see many advantages in working collaboratively with an English teacher or a Social Studies teacher while teaching students about the Spanish language and the Latino and Hispanic cultures.   

Reflections

This course has helped me refine my skills in certain technological areas. Being born during the early 1980’s I can be considered a Digital Native and grew up with a lot of technology.  I have been blogging, have created wiki’s and podcasts in the past, and this course helped me recall some of the skills that I have previously learned for fun when I was an undergraduate.  These skills are useful and now I feel confident in implementing them in my Spanish classroom. 

This course has emphasized something that my mother told me a long time ago, that is the importance of being a life-long learner.  Being a teacher has changed so much in my lifetime just like technology.  As technology changes teachers need to be aware of it to reach new learners in the classroom.  The new areas of teaching and learning are always changing and therefore it is important for me as a professional teacher to keep learning to be the fully prepared to teach new learners.

There are some things that are important for me to be teacher-centered in the foreign language classroom in order to build a solid foundation of learning for the students. Once that foundation is built the transition into learner-centered.  The process of being leaner-centered has a great deal of benefits where I as the teacher can guide the students to finding their way in learning a new language.  Being learner-centered the students will have the ability to access all kinds of different resources to find answers and give them a greater sense of accomplishment. 

In being a life-long learner I will always look for new and better ways to teach children.  There is always a different way that can be used to be more effective when teaching.  There a so many new technologies and new technological advances that I can learn to implement into my classroom.  These are things that I can use to increase student interest and involvement as opposed to running a traditional classroom.  By being aware of many different ideas I can have a class that is constantly fresh and keeps student interest by not becoming stale. 

There are two technological goals that I would like to have implemented in the next two school years; one would be for a classroom set of laptop computers and for there to be wireless internet access in my classroom.  The advantages of each student having access to a computer while in my class would be great so that I would not have to take them to and reserve the computer lab.  There are so many wonderful things that can be done using the computer with learning a new language.  I would have the ability to record a podcast of a story or an assignment in Spanish and then have the students listen to it on their own computer to complete the task at hand working at their own pace.  The next thing is having wireless internet access in the classroom as opposed to a direct line.  Being wireless there would be a lot less clutter from all of the different cords and such that would need to be present to connect everything otherwise.  There are of course many obstacles from getting these implemented, but most relevant is the availability of funds.  I have already done a lot of research about buying a classroom set of computers from the city Public School system, and have given my finding to a union grant writer to try and find grant money to pay for this.  We were able to find someone who was willing to give the district grant money for the computers, but unfortunately we were unable to get that money because they stipulated that we buy the computers from a certain company and the district was contractually obligated to buy from another company.   I will continue to search for different companies that may be willing to donate older computers to the classroom and hopefully when the contract is done we can still receive the grant money that has already been found.

Looking back to week one and how much I have progressed throughout this course fills me with some pride.  I have a new confidence to use technology in my class instead of shying away from it.  I feel that there is a sense of not implementing technology because it may be difficult to figure out a starting point for using it.  From the checklist from week one thing that I can change is the use of technology across the curriculum.  I can see many advantages in working collaboratively with an English teacher or a Social Studies teacher while teaching students about the Spanish language and the Latino and Hispanic cultures.   

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