Becoming Tech-Savy

I was so inspired by Neil's presentation on Friday!
I could not believe the quality of work he was able to achieve with the students! I loved how he used technology as a tool and not just an add-on in the classroom. I really liked the idea of the Pod Casts for assessment, and think it could be quite valuable in my math classroom. One of the general outcomes for the curriculum is being able to "communicate mathematically". I can just imagine using this as a tool to assess student understanding of certain concepts. It will also be interesting to see how students reason through problems. It will be really beneficial to be able to pinpoint where students are struggling in their thought processes, and then focus my teaching on problem areas. Using podcasts will be so much faster than doing the oral assessment via interview.

I'm also quite intrigued by Google Docs. (Hence the topic for my showcase) I started using google this summer as a "more permanent email address" and have become quite comfortable with the basic operations. I didn't really explore GoogleDocs until this last weekend, and I must say that I am quite impressed with the sophistication and ease of use of the program. I think it would be a great tool to use in my teaching!

I'm learning all about these cool technology things that we can incorporate into the classroom, and although I am getting quite excited about using all that the internet has to offer, I still feel slightly skeptical about the ease of use in the classroom. A collaborative website is only as valuable as the members who join in. What if students are just not interested in reviewing course-related websites? What if they are unfamiliar with technology in math? What if I try to bring in technology, and it totally fails? What then?

There are a lot of things I would like to include in my practice. And although I am totally inspired and ready to start teaching, I need to limit myself to slowly incorporate all these great ideas as opposed to overwhelming myself and my students with an overkill of technology.