Opening Day

Wow what a rush! The first day and we are on our way to become great teachers. I was a little nervous entering the classroom not knowing what to expect. Dr. Smirnova welcomed all of us with a big smile and began teaching. Having her a previous semester, I know what to expect from the course and I look forward to enjoying another journey in her class. We went over a lot of material within the course already and I'm still a little nervous about teaching an entire class. This is a first experience for me, but it is important to get all the jitters out before student teaching. I feel pretty confident with incorporating my lessons with the use of technology. It definitely helps that I'm in the ITE field and already have previous knowledge. My first goal in this class is to stay on top each assignment and really try to understand the material. As I go down the list of assignments the first thing that popped up was a video. I have seen this video multiple times in my IT class. This video has a powerful learning message and it is through the eyes of students. As you play the video it shows each student holding up a message about something with technology. It is important to use technology throughout our lessons because this gives students opportunities to work hands on with the material and make the lessons more engaging. Students are growing up in the 21st century today, therefore, it is important for teachers to become more familiar with technology. Being blinded by technology is not the way to go because it is so prominent in today's society and you can't shut it out. This video clearly shows the affect that it has on students today. Not only just being on the computer, but also watching television, gaming, iPads, etc. I personally think I am ready for the 21st century learners. As mentioned above I came in this class with previous knowledge how to incorporate technology with a lesson. I'm hoping this class will help me learn about more tools to use when creating a lesson, but for right now I am pretty confident in teaching the 21st learners.
The cool thing about the second class though was using the different tools to introduce ourselves. The first tool that came to mind was GoAnimate. This Web 2.0 tool, I used in Presentation Media last semester. GoAnimate is a fun and interactive way to get the students involved in the classroom. You can create scenarios for educational settings. In my video I included different sections that I would want my fellow peers to know about me. I was having a challenging time accessing the video because Dr. Lazarevic is the only professor who is allowed to access to embed the video on YouTube. A lot of emails were sent back and forth, but we finally got the video to work and it came out terrific. I can definitely see myself using this tool for lesson plans and maybe even in the future for student teaching. Above is my video for GoAnimate! Feel free to watch it as many times as you want. Can't wait to blog more about my endeavors.