Saturday, July 3, 2010

First Immpressions

The course title to me, "Educational Technologies" implied using tools such as power point, videos, possibly Skype, clickers and other things of that nature. While I am familiar with these processes, I thought perhaps that there were embellishments that I was unaware of, and I believe that enriching what I already know is always of value. But now I see this class offers a much broader opportunity to explore educational tools beyond my expectations and I'm interested to learn how best to utilize these vast resources to make my teaching more interactive and interesting.

I said in class that I personally feel responsible to not be "left in the dust" of technology, especially now that it is clear to me that our students are the digital natives and we (most of us) are the digital immigrants.

However, personally I need hands on practice of new technology tools. I struggle to merely read the "manual" or the help screen, and fully grasp the most efficient use of a tool that is new for me.

For example, editing the course participant page was OK but I expected an attachment option as in e-mail programs so I could attach a photo. Consequently I'm not sure how to insert one.

Until next time,
Karen

2 comments:

  1. Karen,
    I will try to keep your comments in mind. You're right that I did not add to the handout how to add a picture because, although I mentioned briefly how to do it in class for those who wanted to jump ahead, your homework for this week was simply to bring in a picture to our next class so that I could walk you through the steps of adding it to the Course Participants page.

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  2. Karen - I agree that hands-on practice using the "new" web-based technologies we are learning about in this class can be time consuming and sometimes frustrating. I have found that by following each tool's or app's prompts, or just by experimenting with each, one can eventually reach a basic understanding (and the ability to use)of each tool/app.

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