Week Fourteen Review: Technology 101 Skills for Teachers By Shelly Fryer
Shelly Fryer is a teacher from Oklahoma who actively and creatively utilizes technology within her classroom. She works in an A Plus School which focuses on integrating art into the curriculum that must be taught. Shelly also helps other teachers and schools lean how to do this by providing training at workshops. The classroom Shelly teaches in is lucky enough to be 1:1 with iPads, this allows for her students to incorporate technology as well as art into their educations. Shelly also has a wonderful blog that is full of great resources. She recently made a post called Technology 101 Skills for Teachers, this is the post I will be discussing today!
Shelly stresses that teachers need to make sure that they encourage and require their students to use technology creatively. One of the workshops that Shelly is involved with is an “A Plus Technology 101” workshop. This workshop aims to educate teachers on how to successfully integrate iPads in to education.
The main points that Shelly brought up when discussing this workshop were about what teachers should do if they want their technology integration to be successful. She warns teachers that they need to be aware of their student’s developmental levels and make sure that everything is developmentally appropriate. Shelly also says that knowing how to use the technology correctly and being fluent in the vocabulary associated with it is important. Personally I often overlook the vocabulary aspect, however, Shelly is correct in order to effectively teach it you must be able to use, understand, and teach the vocabulary associated with it.
There is also a lot of support available that helps when trying to integrate technology into the classroom. Shelly talked about how Google sites, Seesaw, QR codes, and SafeShare.TV are examples of great supporting tools. Seesaw is a website that allows you to make digital portfolios, it appears to be a very user friendly and helpful site. Safeshare.TV is a site that you can use to show students YouTube videos, it takes the video link and shows just the video. This is really helpful because it eliminates the distracting suggestion videos as well as the inappropriate videos that students could stumble upon on YouTube. To learn about other helpful resources Shelly discussed check out her post.
|
|
Shelly also said that it is really helpful for students to share what they know because it helps them to feel a sense of purpose and motivates them to do their work and learn. I agree with Shelly about the importance of students sharing their work. Technology helps to make this more possible, instead of just sharing students work in the hallways it can now be shared on the internet at safe places like their classroom Twitter or Seesaw.
Shelly brought up so many important things to be aware of when incorporating technology into the classroom. Her post is full of wonderful resources that will help to successfully do this. It provides a great foundation for teachers who are interested in incorporating technology into their classrooms.
