The article “College hosts educational technology speaker
series” describes the T21 Speaker Series held at Illinois State University for
the students, staff, faculty, and alumni
of the College of Education. The purpose
of this series was to give these professionals the opportunity to be exposed to
and practice using the technology skills that are necessary to teach the
students of today’s technology rich society. Topics covered in this series were
special education students, digital resume-building, and incorporating iPads
into the curriculum. The series took place in and Exploratorium that was
equipped with three different types of interactive whiteboards, a 3-D
printer, iMacs, iPads, Chromebooks, advanced recording devices, interactive
dry-erase surfaces, and stations for collaboration. The audience was able
to observe how to use the technologies and work with the technologies hands on.
The best way to learn a skill is to practice it. One of the presenters,
Cassandra Mattoon, took the audience through the process of how she determined
how to use iPads in her curriculum. She showed them how to be selective and to
not force applications into a lesson if it truly does not fit. Then, she brought
her own preschoolers into the series and paired each student up with a member
from the audience. They were to work with the preschooler to play and learn on the
iPad.
The idea behind this series is great. I think that all
educators, students learning to be educators, and even parents should have the opportunity
to be a part of a series like this. I am certainly not very knowledgeable about
technology and neither were my parents. The course I am currently taking, IT
365, is definitely introducing many new technologies to me but I know I have a
lot of work ahead of me. I think it is important that educators are abreast and knowledgeable of the technologies that are
current because they can be used in the classroom to enhance teaching,
participation, and learning of students.
No comments:
Post a Comment