Standard 6.6

Prezi


Jing

Google Presentation


6.6    Candidates use technology to effectively communicate with students, parents, and colleagues.

1. This particular standard tells me that I need to make sure that I feel comfortable enough around different types of technology to utilize them in sharing necessary information with my students, their parents and my fellow educators. This is especially important when so much can be communicated so quickly and there are often major decisions waiting on a single communication to be made. If I'm able to effectively utilize these various technologies then my students will feel more engaged, my students' parents will feel more involved and aware of what's going on and my colleagues will be able to offer me constructive criticism, advice or I'll be able to do the same for them. Especially with teaching high school age students, I will need to be able to communicate with them in a way they will be able to identify with. I also feel that as students are in that age bracket, their parents can become less aware of what's going on because the students tend to not inform them. Being able to let my students' parents know what we are doing and how their child is responding to the class will be of huge benefit to everyone.

2. I've been able to create a Google Presentation about the Revolutionary War, which I've also uploaded and tweaked for Prezi. I found it easier that way because I was able to create a sequence I liked with the power point application and then by putting it into Prezi, I was able to tweak it to be a bit more interesting looking. I also created Jing video about how to upload a Google presentation into Prezi. I noticed it was a bit different on my PC as opposed to using the Macs in class, but since most students are more likely to have a PC at home, this might be more beneficial to them.

3. I suppose the biggest thing I'm concerned with in implementing these things into my classroom would be can I manage to still make my Jing videos and Prezi shows interesting enough to maintain my
students interest. Will I be comfortable enough with what ever technological applications there are for communication by that time and will I be able to keep up with what ever the trending method of communication is with the students? I still remember when MySpace was all the rage and now it's been nearly forgotten about.

4. I think the best way to stay on top of new ideas and applications for teachers to communicate with students is to be part of one or more of the many online communities out there for teachers to share information. For instance, while I was looking for more information on educational technologies, I found a site called Edutopia, which I have joined. There are many discussions and articles and it's for educators and many of the things being discussed are new technologies and how teachers who are not overly comfortable with technology can become more so etc. There's articles about so many things for helping a teacher to stay on top of his/her game that I plan to start reading up on many of the these discussions and to start trying out some of the suggestions they have for becoming more familiar with technologies.