Reflection on my 1st Technology Class

Good Day Fellow 21st Century Educators,
In many ways it is difficult for me to reflect on the changes in my thinking due to the excellent exposure to technology and 21st century learning that I have received in this course. I am just now embarking on my teaching career and currently getting my room and my mind ready for the challenges that await. In addition, to that my students will be very young, only in the 1st grade. First grade seemed to be too early on in the primaries for some of the topics we have touched on. Nevertheless, I have tried to stretch my mind to find ways to include the technologies and concepts from the course in my thinking about the upcoming first graders I will be learning with.
This course has keyed me in to the ideas not just of 21st century learners, a concept I am well acquainted with, but to also look ahead at the 21st century skills they will need to thrive as adults. This is an important area of connection. Many of the ideas I have heard about and indeed many of my own conceptions and notions about today’s students have been primarily focuses on using technology to get their attention and to get them engaged. Much to my surprise, I hadn’t really focused on teaching them how to use the technology as a tool going forward. In widening my focus a few degrees, the course materials have solidified my ideas concerning what my first graders can, and more importantly need to be able to do with available technology.
On major focus of the class has been on the use of web 2.0 based collaborative and social networking tools. Previously, I had not grasped the power and ease of use afforded by these fantastic tools. As the weeks have unfolded, I have had many new ideas of how I can use blogs, wikis and podcasting in my first grade class and in our school. I have already had conversations with our school it specialist to determine what access I am able to provide to my students, and how I might be able to mange it. I am confident that as I step through the days of this first year, that many more opportunities for technology deployment will arise, and I feel better equipped to use them when they do.
This class has also served to get my mind more focused on creating an environment where my students can build their own learning, rather than a stage for my lessons and teaching. I had a strong belief before, that my classroom should be a place that belongs to me and the students together, but many of the ideas from class have given me specific methods and really galvanized my resolve to get my students to take responsibility for their own learning.
In light of what I have learned I will be using tool oriented language with my students. In effect getting them to see that the knowledge they are building for, themselves as tangible tools they can use to solve problems and to create. I knew before that I would have to help the children understand and set goals for themselves. I know now that that has to be a much more specific and focused part of their 1st grade year. I had planned on using morning meetings as community builder, and now I can see so much better how vital that is, and that I must give the students a good amount of ownership in those meetings each day.
As this year unfolds, I will be implementing a plan to build the students’ understanding and use of technology terminology and practices. It is my first long term goal to create an underlying curriculum that will guide my students to understand universal terms like cut , copy, paste, and menu as they pertain to using a computer. I want to move them from having to watch another person move the mouse around the desktop in order to follow along, and move them to where they understand the terms and instructions well enough to use their ears to follow those same instructions. In short, they should be able to make their way through a new program or web application because they have a feel for the environment, and understand the jargon found there.
Secondly I would like to get them to the point that they can pickup and use technology devices like still digital cameras, digital camcorders and digital voice recorders by them selves. This will require that they become familiar with a few universal symbols (arrow, skip, play pause stop, etc.) that a surprising number of our digital natives haven’t really keyed into yet. With a basis in the meaning of the symbology of technology they will be better equipped to figure out how to use equipment that may not be familiar with them initially. again I will do this by having some exploration opportunities early on to make them aware of their use and capabilities so that as the year progresses they might suggest their use to create.
David