ms_Final+Reflection

**Final Reflection**

 **Section I: Role of/importance of technology in today's classrooms; Ethics and technology use** I believe that technology is here to stay. Technology is essential in education, but I also think that it is best used in moderation, along with other educational methods. Giving students the chance to use technology like blogs and wiki’s in school is a very creative way to help students learn about collaboration and respect. They can also be great learning tools to teach writing skills and self-expression. A class wiki can teach students to work together and how to respect each other. It is also important to teach kids the importance of online safety and security, especially when they are writing in blogs and wikis. In a mathematics class, “clickers” and cell phones are great tools to use to assess student understanding, but I would also try to help students verbalize questions and make inquiries. Technology can, and probably will, be helpful to get to know students, especially in very large classes, but it is my hope that I can use the technology as a means to initiate personal interaction and relationships. In this way, I hope to teach students to respect technology, and themselves!  **Section II****:** **Personal growth throughout the course**

The area of greatest personal growth was in learning about the powerful Web 2.0 tools. I always thought I was fairly proficient with computers, but I had no idea about all of the wonderful things that are available over the internet! It was a great joy to come to class each week and learn something new every time. Even if I thought I already knew about the topic, I still learned more that I did not know before. The biggest example was Google Docs and the other Google applications. It’s changed the way I use/create documents and presentations. Creating web pages on the class wiki was also a lot of fun.

**Section III****:** **How to plan on keeping current (at least a little) going forward. **What excites you about what you learned?

It was very sobering to realize just how difficult it is to keep up with the technology and how hard it can be to protect kids (and everyone else!) in this environment. A teacher must always be vigilant and smart. I hope to try to keep up with the fast pace of technology by reading, talking to others, especially other faculty members, and talking to my students. I learned so much about the free powerful tools that are available over the internet. It was exciting to just dream and play and already I am using some of these tools in different areas of my life. Here’s a Wordle that I created from my meetings last week in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. ( [|www.wordle.net] ) These are words my group listed.