Week 5 Reflections

My Aha Moment!
My “Aha” moment came after the reading assignment Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky. This article made me truly realize the fact that I am a “digital immigrant”. I grew up without technology, and therefore I always view technology as being new and exciting. But after answering the questions posed in Is It Age or IT: First Steps Toward Understanding the Net Generation by Diana and James Oblinger, I still do not rely on technology the way today’s students do. I am getting there, but just at a slower speed; whereas my students almost take technology for granted because it is a way of life for them. I still maintain quite of an “accent” of being a foreigner in this digital world. I still wear a watch instead of relying on my cell phone for the time. I do not have my cell phone attached to me at all times, I still have a physical address book for phone numbers that I refer to, and I still have not mastered the art of texting. I do not stay on the Internet all of the time, and I have just started the social networking phenomenon of Facebook, which I do not check but maybe once a month.

The reading assignments I have had in ETEC 524 have helped me to have a better understanding and a clearer image of who my students really are. The students that I teach are true “digital natives” or the Net Generation. They view technology as just another part of their life. They in essence do not even realize that they are using technology because it is second nature to them. They think and learn in an entirely different way. Students expect instant information and are able to multitask, sometimes even performing several different tasks simultaneously. They love graphics and games, and they function best when networked. I am determined, as a teacher, to step up to the plate and do my very best to learn their digital language; to allow my students the freedom to use the technology they are already familiar with and introduce new technologies to them in the learning process.

With this better picture of my students, my educational teaching philosophy has turned into an educational “technology” philosophy. My philosophy has not drastically changed. I still feel that the technology cannot replace the teacher, and through the reading assignments I realize that students surprisingly feel the same way. Therefore my objectives have remained basically the same, but my roles and methods are changing. I want to change my role from being a teacher to that of being a facilitator in a student-centered learning environment. My teaching methods in the past have utilized technology mainly to automate the learning process as opposed to using it to informate learning. In the future, my goal is to change my methods to include the benefits that technology can create and to give students the opportunity to learn “their way”.

By writing down my educational technology philosophy, I have been able to focus on projects that will allow me to change my methods by incorporating technology in new ways during the learning process. I am excited by all of the Web 2.0 technologies that are available for free. Before taking ETEC 524, the terms blog, wiki, Jing, avatar, Google apps, and even Web 2.0 were like a foreign language to me. I had heard about them from various teaching workshops, but had been almost overwhelmed to the point that I had not pursued the benefits of using them in my classroom. This course has allowed me to not only use these technologies, but to really see the possibilities of how they can be utilized in the classroom.