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Technology Integration in Education

I have spent the past several months writing our district's technology plan. Many of our goals for the next three years of our plan are based on the NETS and the integration of technology into our curriculum. Much of the information I read in these first two chapters was addressed in my technology plan. I have spent the past year assisting the teachers in my district with technology integration as well as incorporating higher-order thinking skills (a.k.a. - 21st century skills). The resources found in the text are invaluable and in reviewing many of them, I am confident that I will be using and sharing them with my fellow teachers.

What have I learned in this class?

Everything I've learned in this class has been very relevant to my personal life and to my job as a Library Media Specialist. I've eased my fear of tearing into a computer. Also, I've learned alot about some of the great features I'd love to have when I win the lottery and build my perfect computer. The most relevant portion of the class for me was learning more about viruses. I've gotten them before and have them cause me much frustration about losing files and spending time having to reformat my hard drive. I also loved watching the Nerds movies. That may sound kind of strange, but I really learned alot about the history of the computer. So much so, that I actually shared some of what I learned with my students! They, too, were interested. Also, the research I did on the wireless components of a computer was extremely interesting. When I came out of the dial-up age, I was fascinated on how my laptop can hop on a network wherever there is a hotspot. With all that said, this class was definitely a lot more work than I anticipated, however, the amount of knowledge I gained far outweighed the workload.

How to manage computers

Managing my computer at home is a lot like managing the computers in my library at school - I have to be constantly aware of what kids are doing on them. With viruses running rampant on the internet, kids never think a computer crash will happen to them. They never think there are viruses out there just waiting to invade their files, or that a power surge could cause them to lose their documents. I've learned the hard way how blocking the fan on the computer with a picture frame will cause the hard drive to overheat. I've also learned that not paying attention to my battery life on my laptop may cause me to lose my working document if I haven't saved it recently. Yes, I've had my share of hard knocks when it comes to computer management; I try to pass those lessons down to my kids and my students so that they don't have to suffer the frustration of losing files.

Is it important to understand hardware?

Understanding the components of computer hardware is essential in trying to troubleshoot problems. As I was dissecting a computer for the Under the Hood assignment, I learned alot about how certain components work and how they contribute to the computer running successfully. But, I am still very fuzzy on how so many of them work. When I look at the motherboard, I am completely lost as to what each little part does to make it work. There is still no way that I could repair a computer, but at least now I have a little better understanding to what the inside looks like.

What do I know about computers?

I know that I could never be a computer repairman (woman!). I can't even figure out how to take the cover off the CPU. I can barely get the cables hooked up in the right places. Software, programming, that's more up my alley. But, anything remotely related to computer hardware scares me. I'm really hoping this class helps me conquer those fears!

I touched my first computer in high school during my junior year in math class. There was only one available for student's to look at...we weren't really even allowed to touch it without the teacher present. None of the teachers or office staff had computers, everything was typed on a typewriter. All I really remember about the computer is that it was a beast...huge, heavy, not very attractive. I remember thinking that it would be a fad. That was over 30 years ago.

Later, I kind of taught myself how to program code at a huge insurance company. Later, I was involved in data security. I ended my career at that company as an investigator where I had created a huge database on the specs of all my cases. The first wordprocessing program I used was DisplayWrite, the first spreadsheet I used was Lotus. Are these two programs even around anymore? I learned all these skills on the job, so I guess the programming part came kind of easy to me.

Now, as a teacher, I have 3 computers at home and work at a district where there are well over 100 computers and not one typewriter in sight. I am still pretty fluent in learning software technologies, but I'm still stupid about hardware. I hope this class changes all that!

Session 2

Wow! I can't believe how much I've learned in this class in such a short time. Using the webcams is pretty cool. I'll be Skyping with a classroom in New Zealand next month; I just need to figure out how to get my whole class in the webcam view. My students have been correponding with this class for over a month learning how environments and culture affect their lives. It's been a great project, courtesy of www.epals.com. Using all this new technology to share documents over the web has given me another idea. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could get the New Zealand classroom to collaborate over Google Docs with my students? My students are paired up with individual students in New Zealand working on a final collaborative project. We were just going to email the projects back and forth, but after seeing how user-friendly Google Docs is, I think this would be the best avenue for the collaborative piece of the project.

On a different note, I like the idea of online storage; Box.net and DropBox are the two I am most interested in. They have similar features and both appear to be very user-friendly. Both have free accounts, which is great. Box.net offers 1 gb free space while DropBox has 2 gb free, so I'm thinking DropBox is what I will go with. Again, with my New Zealand project, we are going to be sending photos and videos to each other and I was worried about space issues. If I save these files on DropBox, I can allow the New Zealand teacher to share my folder on DropBox and won't have the space worries.