Technology Inquiry

The technology inquiry was a big project and I’m glad that we had most of the whole semester to work on it. It was not a hard project, just one that took a lot of work to complete well. Since we had so much time to work on it, I was able to work on it bit by bit while working on other projects for this and other classes. I probably put a total of four to five hours of work into this project to make it meet the standards I expect of myself. I spent a good chunk of that time looking for resources to use because I wanted to make sure I had information that really answered my question. After I found all my sources, it was easy to write the annotated bibliography because I had read through my resources to decide if they would even make the cut. My screencast took a little longer to do than I expected because I kept fumbling over my words. Finally, I wrote some key points on a note card so I could keep track of what I was talking about. I think this was a helpful project because as teachers we are going to need to go through enormous amounts of information and decide what is and isn’t relevant to a certain topic. Doing the research for this project taught me how to use advanced features in Google Scholar and the resources available to me through the UWSP library website. This project was helpful in refining the skills needed to write an annotated bibliography; which may be used while doing research as a teacher. The technology inquiry was also helpful because I could use this idea in my own classroom as a project for my students. By doing a similar project, it increases my knowledge and gives me the base needed to explain and help my future students with a similar project. I did my project on wikis and learned a great deal about how they can effectively be used in a classroom. I want to incorporate wikis into my classroom some day either to be used for projects or as a place my students can go for information. I think creating a classroom wiki is a great idea because it is an easy way for your students to get a hold of information they need or may have missed due to illness. It’s also a great way for you to stay connected to your students’ parents and let them know what their children are doing in your class. Getting parents involved in their children’s education is a great way to keep students on track outside the classroom. If their parents know what they are working on and when it is due, they may be more likely to ask questions and make sure students are getting their homework done. This was a great project and really opened my eyes to the ways a wiki can be used in a classroom. I’m glad I have access to my peers’ wikis so I can learn ways to incorporate other types of technology into my future classroom.