End of the Fall 2023 Semester

End of the Fall 2023 Semester

 

    My takeaway from this practicum is that integrating educational technology into the classroom isn't as hard as I initially thought it was! For the majority of my practicum, I was able to integrate tech into math, science, and ELA. Students truly enjoyed these experiences, and I did too! I learned that tech is not "scary" (I am not very literate when it comes to using it) and as long as I was confident in myself, it generally worked out! Similarly, I learned that tech can be used as a tool for differentiation. Within my class, many students used tech for Google Translate, speech-to-text, and more! Prior to this practicum, I hadn't viewed educational tech in this sense as I didn't have students who needed it in for those reasons!

    I was able to answer my burning question on my own. Going into teaching grade 5, I was worried that students may have trouble differentiating between academic and personal uses of the internet. My group of students made it very clear that tech is a prominent part of their lives outside of school, and despite this, I never had trouble with them seeing tech as only being something for personal use. My students were inclined to research when it was required, and to make the process easier, I always provided them with links that would help them along the way. I will say, however, that these students need to be taught how to research. While progressing through school during the pandemic was done entirely online, many students have not been exposed to the logistics of how we use technology to research. This is something I am going to keep an eye out for during my last practicum.

    As I was team teaching, I had the opportunity to learn from my teacher partner! She provided me with insights that I had previously never thought of, vice versa! We had similar ideas and beliefs about educational technology, which made planning simple as we had similar goals for how we wanted to incorporate classroom Chromebooks into our lessons, and when! 

    Overall, this was a lovely practicum that I have gained many key takeaways from. I am confident that what I learned over the last 5 weeks has only made me a better teacher. I look forward to implement my learnings into our last practicum :)