#9 Reflection

Is Technology Integration Important?

Technology is used in one form or another in every aspect of our lives. My 75 year old grandma uses it to text her grandkids, even my 3 year old nephew uses it to watch movies on YouTube or listen to his favorite songs. 

Naturally our high tech lifestyle will become a staple in the way we teach in our classrooms. Students do not remember a time in their life that they didn't have an ipad or tablet of their own. Students are very tech savvy. 

In the classroom I can see how every subject can and will be able to link to technology. I could see how to use it for math and reading, but I was surprised to see how it could connect to social studies content. When we used the Finch Robots to learn about the native animals to Utah and how it could connect to coding, that was amazing! Students would totally love to create their own habitat and animal. This is a fun alternative to the traditional report and tell the class. This is a creative and technical way to share the same information. 

I also loved making the stop action movie. It was fun to be creative and share information using technology, movement and music together. My kids loved the movie that my group made so much that they told their school teacher about it and they watched it as a class. My child's teacher loved the idea, I bet she ends up doing something similar with her class. 

Technology allows students to create, edit, lean and engage to subjects like nothing else does. I enjoyed doing the different technology projects during this class much more than I thought that I would. My future students will feel the same way I did when a project is finished and they are able to say, "Look at what I made! Isn't it amazing?"