If I’m being honest, I am the furthest thing from “tech savvy.” Weird, right? A Gen Z who isn’t tech savvy?! A friend of mine took this class before and told me that we had to create our own blogs, post, and comment on others work. As you can imagine, this freaked me right out. I have never really been the teacher to use much “technology” in the classroom (or so I initially thought…)
When I first thought of educational technology, I thought of things like Zoom, Google Classroom, and Twitter. Covid forced a lot of us (educators) to use these platforms to teach our students and come out of our comfort zones (this definitely caused some stress for me, but I survived!) However, after our discussion last week, I came to realize that educational technology technically could be anything! This obviously depends where you are in history (ie: a chalkboard or pencil would have been considered technology back in the day…so, I guess I would’ve thrived as a teacher back in the 1800’s).
Anyways, educational technology is basically using our knowledge and applying it to ways that fit our enviornment. It is changing our enviornment to benefit/help us succeed. As Katia mentioned last class, earthquake proof walls are considered technology! Humans are using their knowledge to build and create things to benefit them. I realize that I do use many forms of educational technology daily in my classroom. Part of my job is to figure out what would benefit my students/parents, and using it to their advantage (ie: iPad’s, Edsby, projector screens, etc.) These help with communication, visuals, entertainment and learning! Educational technology can come with challenges, but also rewards. I am sure this will be something that I will further explore.
Well, I hope I created this all correctly and I hope that I continue to strengthen my technology skills and learn lots in the coming weeks. Thank you for reading my FIRST blog post!
Erin
