I am thankful for having had the opportunity to take this course because I feel that it opened my horizons about using technology in the classroom. In the past, I was only familiar with using Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Prezi, iPads, and blogging within the classroom. After taking this class, I feel that I now possess the knowledge and preparedness to use other forms of technology such as podcasts, webquests, and websites within my future instruction. I love how these later forms of technology can be used to incorporate listening and speaking, whereas PowerPoint, Word, and blogging tend to only incorporate two of the language modalities, reading and writing. When working with ELLs, it is important to incorporate all of the language modalities because they help ELLs further access the curriculum.
I wish I had taken an educational technology course, such as this one, earlier during undergrad because I feel that we should have been given some technological instruction prior to student teaching and receiving our Bachelor's Degree in Education. In a quickly advancing technological world, our students must know how to interact with technology and utilize it to their advantage. However, most teachers, including myself, cannot keep up with the ever-changing technology and therefore are not able to adequately teach our students how to use it. Therefore, courses such as this one should be necessary for every educator to take, and not in their second-to-last semester of graduate school.
