Reflection 6

From the very first lesson I attended for this subject, I became very excited and eager to learn what possibilities in ICT are available to improve student’s educational outcomes. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before I started to feel a little overwhelmed and had a feeling as if I was starting to fall behind in all my areas of my study, not just in this one.

When I reflect on this thought, I think a contributing factor was that I would have my tutorial late one afternoon than two days later I would have to submit the weekly assignment on the new technology I had just learnt in the previous lesson. Now I am not complaining about this because this is my journey and if I want to be successful in education then I must be competent in ICT. My school education finished twenty years ago (where I can’t really recall doing too much with computers) so I found myself concentrating more on the operation of these new technologies than the actual theory content of the lesson. I also struggled with the fact that I could not find too many examples of how I could use these new technologies in my teaching discipline of Industrial Technology and Design. As I worked through these difficulties I clearly understood the importance of ICT in schools and why a successful teacher must not only be able to operate new ICT technologies but also must understand and adapt to whatever technology may be available to them in the future.

Now I have that little rant out of the way I will discuss what I found really helpful through this course so far. Firstly, I am normally a quiet person in amongst people I am not familiar with, so I found the collaboration aspect of the class really helpful with breaking the ice with the other students. Secondly, I found that collaborating with the other students really took the stress and anxiety out of the development and planning stage of an assessment, as it cemented and further pin pointed the desired outcome. This would in turn give me a better chance of understanding and passing the assessment material. Other benefits from involving ICT in class include helping to better engage students in the lesson, and also equip students with the skills to work online.

Overall, I really enjoyed being exposed to new websites and learning the new skills that go along with operating them. This experience will be of great benefit to me as an educator and more importantly will help improve lesson engagement with my students in their learning material. I believe the best teachers have the option to incorporate all the tools available to them to achieve greater student academic results, therefore, if a teacher wants to continually improve as an educator they need to stay abreast of the latest technologies available to them.