When I first signed up for this class I wasn’t sure what I would learn and how I would be able to incorporate computers into the classrooms daily activities considering the fact that many classrooms only have one computer. I was quick to find out that there are so many aspects that would be extremely helpful to bring into the classroom.
One of the main programs we learned to use was Nvu, which before this class I had no idea what it was. It turned out to be a great program to use if you need to create a website and now after taking this course I feel I could create a website for my classroom that will be able to guide my students in learning and also enable parents to keep up to date on what their children are learning. At times Nvu was very frustrating because I have a habit of not saving my work till the very end and as I learned this is a major problem in website design. I quickly learned to save my work throughout the whole process which prevented any minor problems from occurring. I also had some problems when it came time to insert images because you have to be very specific in which kind of file to save them as. It took some trial and error to figure it out, but I’m very proud of my results and happy to see that all of my images work. After completing each page on Nvu we had to publish our website on WS_FTP, which is a fairly easy program to work. After learning to sort my U drive based on the date it made it a lot easier to find the file I needed to upload so I never really faced any problems when publishing using WS_FTP. In this course we also used programs that will be very helpful for a future teacher. I specifically enjoyed learning about Microsoft Publisher because I feel there are so many handouts and assignments I can create using this program. It is nice when a teacher sends home a newsletter to their student’s parents and it looks professionally done, this is simply done using Microsoft Publisher and I’m very happy that I am comfortable with the program now. We also learned how to create puzzles which is another important skill for teachers to have because it allows them to making learning a little more fun and gives students a break from formal education. All of these programs that I learned how to use will be very helpful in the future especially since every day we become more dependent on computers and it is important for students to be very familiar with them. Simply using all of the skills I learned will put me one step ahead of all the teachers that teach out of a textbook and I feel this will make students feel like they are important because they can create websites, use publisher, create puzzles, and create photo stories.
Overall, I really enjoyed this course and I am happy to say that I will take the skills I learned and use them in my classroom. Knowing that there are many different learning styles I feel by bringing technology into the classroom you are facilitating learning for the students that don’t learn by lectures and meeting the needs of your students. Knowing now that there are ways to incorporate technology into other subject matters I feel that I will become a stronger teacher by using the resources around me which will ultimately benefit my students.