Role of Technology in Our Teaching

This was the last week of our course ICT, I learned different new things to make my teaching effective and meaningful. I did not have much knowledge about technology when I joined this course. I believed that a good command on subject matter would be enough for good teaching, but I was wrong. The most important thing in today’s teaching is to make cross connections between different subjects and prepare our students as an active learner to generate their awareness towards global issues. So that they can realize their social roles and responsibilities, as a good citizens. This course helped me a lot to generate these things in my teaching.

                 During this course, we create our own blog to share our views on any topic covered in the class. It is a great idea to start in my future class. It might be little hard for students in first few weeks, but I will definitely improve their writing and thinking skills with the passage of time. This is good way to connect students with the topic even when they are not in the classroom. The best part of the blog is when all the students are allowed to read each others writing piece and able to provide the feedback. It will encourage them to appreciate others work.

                 Another good experience I had in this class was creating my own web site. It is a good place to organize your stuff at one place and communicate with your students, parents, and principal. It helps a teacher to make her work easier on regular basis by posting her home work, assignments, due dates, field trips, blog posts, teacher’s expectations, and her student’s best work.

                 I learned different smart board games and activities during the group presentations. Our professor Mike Nantais provides us different websites to search for future resources and make our teaching more meaningful. I also learned to create word splash, digital-story, image creating, and lots more. The best and most useful assignment for present situation is our e-portfolio. It is really useful to apply for different places and helps us to save money and energy to go and submit hard copy of our resume or portfolio.

             At the end I would like to thanks my professor Mike Nantais for providing us these useful resources make a commitment to my profession that I will work as hard as possible to create a positive growth in the lives of my students and help them to fulfill their dreams.

Power Point Presentation

Power point presentation is a great way to present our detailed topic in brief and concise way. It is an interesting way to present information with attractive layout to engage our audience. Recently, I learned different important points to make our presentation more effective. I watched an interesting video showing different mistakes in power point presentation like: too much text on the slide, bad colour and contrast, wrong font, no use of pictures, directly reading the text etc. I learned to make my presentation more effective by avoiding these mistakes.
       I prepared my e-portfolio on power point with different features offered by power point. I attached my classroom pictures with the appropriate slides to make it more interesting. I carefully select the font and colour of slides. Preparing portfolio online is a great way to save time and money in travelling.
            After learning the important points of power point presentation, I would like to encourage my students to adopt these useful ideas in their future learning.

Digital Story Telling

Last week, In our ICT course we got a list of great web sites to learn about using tools of digital media to create and share idividual and communities stories in our future classrooms. I worked on few of them and find them as an excellent source to engage our students. Using these kinds of web sites in our classroom teaching will not only develop students creativity, but also improve their social relationship with the world.
                Learning to use digital tools of the story telling can create a rich learning environment in our classrooms. The one I like most is the 'MapSkip', create stories around place: http://mapskip.com . It makes the world canvas for stories and photos. I like the idea to share stories and pictures with the places they are connected to. I will try to use this idea in my future classroom by assigning a project related to specific place, individual, game. While working on it I was trying to connect it with different subjects Like; ELA for reading and writing kills, Geography for area awareness, Art, and many more. It will also improve their ability to share their work  as well as appreciate other's creative thought.
                This site give you an option to add a new place to share your story and read the story written by some body else. It gives an oppotunity to connect with the place of your dream stories. This site provide easy help directions for students to work easily and feel proud of it.
Another one I like is 'Story Bird'; http://www.storybird.com   is a visual story telling community. It is a global hub of readers, writers, and artists. it helps people to make, create, and show visual stories. It is akind of global community. This site provide opportunity to create account for your students. and make them as a active member of society
             I am looking forward to use these ideas in my future teaching and make my teaching more engaging and meaningful.

Smart Board Activites in Classroom Teaching

From last few weeks, I was trying to find out a good smartboard activity for my ICT- group presentation. Finally, I select few activites and combine them for the effective use of my students. I want to engage my students with their studies as they entered the classroom in the morning. I always want to work with younger students. This age group always feel proud, if they entered first in the classroom and be first on the smartboard activity. I will try to find out different morning activites for different months or some how try to connected with it. For example, Halloween activity for October, Rememberence day activities for November, and Christmas activies for December.

            These kinds of morning activites also helps a teacher to show the attendence of the students. As they put their pumpkins on the ground and teacher can easily find out who is missing in the classroom. It always better to confirm first before marking them absent.

            I always preffer to connect their studies with real world. I select few activites where they will find the weather outside and fix it on the smartboard. This is the smart way to achieve our learning outcomes with some hands on activites. I will model them to share their findings in their journal books. I will keep those books as a proof of their learning to show at parent-teacher meetings.

           Every child wants to go on smart board activity. To be organised it is always suggested to select one student as a 'Star Of The Week', to make sure every student get a chance to perform these activites. A teacher can include different activites to engage her students like some dice activites, some patterns for maths, few digital stories for EAL and social studies etc.

         Then learning will be more enjoyable and fun for them instead of burden or stress.

Schools kill Creativity

I like this video by Sir Ken Robinson, because it reminds me of my school times. There is no doubt that our schools are always made for the betterment of our kids, but this is also true that sometimes school kills the creativity of students.

 I find a huge difference in educations system of todays then with past, when I was the student. Those days nobody cared about children are inborn artists. Only those kids who showed interest in mathematics or science were considered as intelligent and capable. Anyone having interest in dance, music, cooking, and arts was considered as least intelligent. Most parents wanted their kids to be doctor, engineer or pilot. Teacher only felt proud of those kids who were good in studies. Nobody cared what a kid wants to be. To get higher marks in academics, students had to attend school from 8 am. to 5 pm. and go to private tutors after the school.

     But time is changing now; teachers and parents do care about their kids and their hobbies. At least I realize it after coming to Canada, parents send their kids to different activities to explore, but power is still in the hands of teachers and parents. Kids have to pick the activities from the given ones. We should let our kids to explore their world to fulfill their curiosity and allow them to learn from their mistakes.

As a teacher I will try my best to provide different ways of learning to my students, so they can pick most suitable way to learn and encourage them to be original and creative.

Technology shows a great impact on the our modren life style. We cannot even imagine our daily routine without technology. We as a teacher needs to be very careful about the use of technology. I find it as my responsibility to prepare my students and help them to explore new technology, but its only possible if I find myself comfortable with it. A teacher always taken as subject matter expert. I knew that I an not very efficient in that field, but I also believe that we can learn any skill with practice. Using technology is not an automatic skill, the more and more time you spend on it you will be in love with it. We have to create our interest in it.

                   From last two weeks, we were creating our own websites for our future classroom. As I mentioned earlier, I am not expert in the  use of technology. I Knew that it is not going to be easy for me. But my professor showed me lots of ideas and I Spent few nights to figure it out. While working on it I realise it will be a great help for my future classroom. This website will help me to organize my stuff at one place. I can influence my students not only in the classroom but also outside the school too.

                      I always find parents as a great source in child overall development. We can contact each other regular basis. I can put my presentations, students best work, and excellent resouces on it, so anybody can find it easily.  There are still lots of things I still need to learn in technology. May be that's why we call ourself life long learner. The most important thing is, learning always shows better result when you share it with other.
                                                 "Always Share Your Learnings"

Last week we discussed abuot 'How to improve high level thinking of our students' in my course 'Evaluation and Assessment'. I find it really thought provoking, what a teacher need to do to make her students think beyond the obvious? How they can connect themselves to that particular situation? I also atteneded a PD last week "Real World Teaching", and I found my answer there. Then I realise our teaching should not only limited to our text books, but we should connect our students to the real world. Teacher should always think that how could we teach our students in a best way?  The answer is definetly not by reading books only but with 'Hand on Activities". Let them learn by doing things in science and social tudies.
For ELA, teacher should not ask only recalling question, the best choice is to use 'Bloom Taxonomy' to prepare questions. I know that asking Questions is not an automatic skill, we have to prepare ourself for it, for first few years teacher can prepare questions in advance, write down them on the sticky notes and ask students on appropriate time. To develop their high level of thinking is by coonecting them with ICT. Ask them to expess their views on blogs.It will be hard for first few years. But at last it will pay us worth.
 I myself was very uncomfortable in writing blogs in the begning. But gradually it is improving my confidence and incouraging me to use techology in my teaching. Even though i am finding lots of difficulties in technology because i wa not use to it,but i am really want to thank my teachers and friends for their help. I am looking forward to learn more and more technology in my classroom, which will be very helpful for me and my students in future.