Final Blog

How do we inspire others to change? Should we? Does the way that we teach need changing? Are students the same or are they changing? What do we want for ourselves and our own children? How are you going to use technology in the classroom? (Be specific.)

These are all very serious questions that we need to define a personal philosophy for. We can inspire people to change certain aspects of themselves in many ways. They may change the way they act because they see the person they admire change as well or do it differently. They may change after being shown different ways of doing something instead of relying on the one way they have done it all their life. Take math-there is always more than one way to check your answer and arrive at the same conclusion. The only difference is the different methods you used in order to get you there. I believe we all are capable of inspiring others to change the ways they act or what they believe in. But the only reason to have someone else change is because you feel that they are doing something in a long and complicated way. It's like being a child, when you find out something new, you want to share it with the world. There will be people that tell that child to go away because they are bothering them, but there will be others that will want to hear every word they say. So there will always be people who want to hear about new ways of doing things and people who have their own way of doing things and don't want to fix what isn't broken. I believe that's completely okay. But I would want to hear about the new way of doing things from everyone in order to decide for myself what I believe will work and what won't.
I'm a big believer in differentiated lesson plans and teaching with the goal of having the student understand the material and being able to talk about it with another student. But the way to do that can be done in many different ways. Just as long as those two goals are met, I don't see why we can't try other ways of teaching. Of course, the way it is now is okay. Students today are more connected technology-wise than other students, but it doesn't change how we should teach them. As I may have mentioned in another blog post, there isn't much difference from an older generation compared to the new one. We just had different mediums to apply our ideas on (like passing notes instead of texting your friend that sat behind you). What do we want from ourselves and from our own children? That question is very broad. But in a technology in the classroom context, we want our children to learn as much as they can even if it means going to their level and using different types of technology to help them learn material you could find in text books. Finally, I wanted to tell you about how I would use technology in my classroom. I have fallen in love with digital story telling, story bird and smart board lesson plans. Those are my three favorites and I know I will find a way to incorporate them in math, science, writing and reading. But I have also loved playing around with some of the teacher websites like teacherlingo.com, quizlet.com, googledocs.com and many others. Overall, I did learn a lot about the resources I could find online to use in a classroom that I would have never thought to look for on my own. I really enjoyed this class and can't wait to try out these ideas in a real classroom one day.