Tomorrow I will be a guest speaker for a class of pre-service teachers at Creighton University. The class is called “Instructional Technology for the Classroom”. Here is how the course is listed in the catalog.
CATALOG DESCRIPTION
This course is designed to help teachers develop a more robust, engaging, and student-centric curriculum through the use of educational technology. We will focus on practical, student-centric methods of using technology resources in the classroom through simulations and lesson development. The course is broken into three parts: 1) Building a toolbox of resources; 2) Implementing tech tools and resources into lessons; 3) Administrative considerations, mobile devices, and Personal Learning Networks. At the end of the course, students will build a website that they can use in the classroom.
The instructor who is my friend, Mike Mansour, asked me to talk to the class and share how I use technology in my classroom. I was thrilled he asked me to visit with his class. This will be the 3rd time I spoke to his students. During the summer 2010 session I make a classroom visit. But this past summer, I Skyped into the class. I think Skyping in would be preferable to an actual visit for a technolgy class! Tomorrow we are going to use either Google+ Hangouts or FaceTime. Mike has an iPad, so he’s planning on passing it around so students can ask me questions.
I love to share all the wonderful projects my 3rd graders have done. I’m afraid that I might talk too fast! I will share that I love using digital tools to take my regular projects and put them on our class wiki and then onto the web. I have to be sure to mention VoiceThread, Animoto, PhotoPeach, Slide, Wordle, Glogster, Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Shelfari, and Skype. I hope I don’t miss anything! Just in case, I better list my class wikis.
I also want to strongly encourge all of the pre-service teachers to work on building up their PLN. Using Social Media sites, like Twitter, has been an invaluable resource for me as a teacher. Wish me luck!
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