Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum

Well, I suddenly find myself at that time again. That time when the semester starts winding down and all of my courses come full circle in their reviews of the material learned. However, one course stands out above all the rest when it comes to meaningful information. To describe everything I learned from EME 4406, or Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum, would take days and days, and pages and pages to type up. So to keep it reasonable for myself and others, I will try to be brief yet thorough.

From this course, I learned a plethora of ways to use technology in the classroom. It can be used for communication and connecting with the community, to increase awareness of the world around the students, to inspire and encourage creativity and metacognitive thinking, it can be used for exploring and researching new ideas and perspectives, and it can be used simply as a way to get students interested and motivated to help them learn more meaningfully. I also learned many tools in which I could assist students to learn with technology, some of those being screencasting, podcasting, course wikis, concept mapping, blogging, social networking, using videos and games, and other online resources. Furthermore, I also learned about the controversies involving technology in education. So, I learned about both sides of the issue, and the problems that can arise through using technology in education, thus I have been able to develop my own views of how and when to use technology in education and how to work on solving the problems that may arise from it.

However, I didn’t just learn how to use technology. I also learned theories, ideas, and methods that I believe will make me a better teacher. I learned about the influence and uses of group work vs individual work, discussions, assessments, lesson planning, and being aware of the different ways that children can learn and how to adapt my lessons based on their interests and abilities.

What I would still like to know about using technology for teaching and learning is how to get other educators involved with using technology so that we can form a worldwide community and help each other to use technology when appropriate. I know there are websites for teachers to network on, but they seem to be under populated. There also doesn’t seem to be a very strong number of teachers who support technology in education, or who know how to use education in ways other than PowerPoint Presentations.

For other students planning on taking this course… my advice is to go wild with it. The more extravagantly you use technology in your lesson plans, the more fun you have creating them, and the more fun your students will have learning from them. Don’t be afraid to use multiple forms of technology in your lesson because of time constraints. Sometimes it’s more important to really learn one thing than it is to vaguely learn several things. Also, don’t procrastinate. Especially on journals. Once you get behind on those, it can be very time consuming and frustrating to catch up on them. So just keep up with your assignments, put obvious effort into everything you do, and you’ll do just fine!