Teaching With Technology - Final Reflection

It is hard to believe that this second summer session is already over. It feels like it went by so much more quickly than the first session. And it has certainly been a roller coaster of a ride. I feel as though I really struggled to keep up with the assignments this time around. The reason for this is probably a culmination of several things. I found it very difficult to keep up with the assignments in a timely fashion due to having to work at my other jobs conducting research for the SURE program and working as a lab technician. I also found it difficult to finish the group projects because my partner did not respond to any of my emails and seems to have dropped off the class. I realize that I should have contacted Dr. Smirnova earlier, but I wanted to give the person a chance because I realize that it is summer and everyone is super busy with work and family life. However, by the time I realized that my partner probably wasn't going to sign in again, the other group was already ahead, so I could not have joined in with them. The expansiveness of the group assignments then just overwhelmed me when faced with trying to do all of the other work for the class. Last semester I was fortunate enough to be a part of a very supportive and hard-working group, and my work in the class reflected that, and I wish I could have been a part of that again.

But despite these difficulties, I've realized that I actually have learned a lot in this course. I found that the eText we were instructed to use was very insightful and had a lot of useful information that I can definitely see myself utilizing in my future classroom. This is the first class I've taken where I've been forced to consider the almost endless options I have as a teacher in terms of integrating technology in my classroom. Before this, the greatest integration of technology that I had experienced in high school was the teacher using a PowerPoint, which is very said to think about now that I'm aware of the vast expansiveness that is educational technology and how it can be integrated in any subject area. I am actually excited to introduce my future students to new avenues of learning, and about the number of new educational technologies that might not even exist at this moment but that might become an essential part of my classroom in a couple of years.