Tech Trek

          Before beginning this assignment I read over the title and thought to myself, I am a native, no doubt about it.  I grew up in a time where pagers were the coolest thing to have, until cell phones were affordable. I used computers in Elementary School, and I was taught well on the different programs. Now, as an adult I use my computer for just about anything, same goes for my phone; it is like my child. Yet, after reading over the assignment I was completely lost. I immediately realized I was not familiar with most of the things listed. How was this possible? Then I realized that every semester my professors asked me to do something with technology that I have never done before. I am constantly learning something new when it comes to technology, so I would say I am a visitor.

The good this about technology is that over the years it has advanced so much that it can help us teach our students. The resources that are available to students now verses when I was in school are completely different; students can do a lot of work from their computers. After looking through each site to use to enhance my students learning, I would use the Slideshare. I chose this one because of the memories I had from when I was in school. I sometimes missed more days than I wanted to, and if my teacher has Slideshare it would have been easier for me to keep up. I probably wouldn’t have had fallen behind so many times.

Technology has impacted the education system in such a huge way that even now days teachers turn to other resources to help them succeed in their career. I believe that social networking for teachers is a great idea. It allows teachers to access other teachers creating new resources for them. Every teacher has a different way of teaching a subject, and sometimes it can be better to see what other teachers ideas are when getting ready to teach a new lesson. It allows teachers to see different aspects. As for twitter, I am not a fan of this and no longer use it; so even as a teacher I would have to turn my back to it. I would possibly stick to other social networking sites. One of my favorite social networking sites is Pinterest, I could spend hours on here. I have already pinned so many different ideas for my classroom. It opens a world of people sharing ideas about what teaching is or could be. Overall, I believe that professional virtual learning is important and every teacher can benefit from it. Our learning experience never ends, it continues as we teach our students.

When it comes to our students virtually learning is extremely important, not only because technology is expanding at a rapid rate. Yet, because soon schools will be digital and students will be expected to present their work in the newest ways. I believe that students will benefit from each one of the examples provided, mostly because they can take this knowledge and carry it with them throughout school. For example, I learned how to make a PowerPoint when I was in Elementary school, and till this day I use it.  Now day’s students have new ways to present their information, and I must say that I really like these ideas. Over the summer I took Diversity and we would use Prezi to complete out presentations. This was my first time using this, and I loved it. If I can enjoy the new ways to present information, I wonder how our students are going to feel about them.

As for the teachers, their top tools for education include some of the following: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, what’s app, and Skype. I chose only to list these few because I found myself interested, simply for the fact that teachers have come a long way. When I was growing up social networking was only for adults, yet now it seems like more and more children are turning to social networking. It is being used for teachers to make contact with students, or to make contact with other educators. Either way, teachers and students are gaining knowledge about technology and the way it works. One thing that I was amazed at was that twitter was the number one tool being used. Before I stated that I am not a fan of twitter, but after reading that it helped one teacher more recently than in her last 30 years, I might have to second guess my statement.

Whether it is educators or students, we all need to remember that technology is advancing and as this happens we will continue to learn new things. I believe that we all need to be open to the idea of new strategies, and remember that each lesson can still be understood with these new approaches. Technology will continue to change, and it will continue to create new resources for us to use.