Chrissy Cohn-Reflection

I have learned plenty of things in this class that I plan to take with me as I begin teaching. I came into this class thinking that technology was a nice addition to education, but not a necessary part of it. After working with so many different types of technology in the class, I now believe that certain uses of technology are definitley necessary in the classroom. One major thing I learned in the class was all the ways that technology could use used to assist diverse learners or those students with special needs. The assistive technologies helped students with disabilities, but also made it easier for students with certain strengths and weaknesses to accomplish their assignments. There are technologies that allow for bigger print and visual representations (for visual learners), audio components in English and different languages (for audio learners or ESL students), and technologies that make certain skills easier, such as typing, reading, writing, and communicating thoughts. When I have students in my classroom who seem like they could excel at their education with the help of a technology like those, I will know what type of technology to seek out and will get them the assistance they need. I also realized that using technology in the classroom creates motivation for students. As long as it is used for a specific purpose and relates to the knowledge the students should be learning in an engaging way, I will use it in the classroom as a way to encourage students to complete activities.
I would like to learn more about how accesible some of these technologies are so that I can implement them into the classroom. I feel like we learned about many technologies and experienced some in the classroom, but I have no idea how much it costs to get these technologies placed in the school and how hard it is to get them improved. However, the software evaluation project helped me understand this, but I hope to learn more about the technology standards at the school that I begin working at.