What am I learning?

What? 
What am I learning? 


Well I will have you know that the best thing I have learned thus far, was google Documents! I love it! I was going crazy trying to figure out how I was going to meet with my groups for all of these group projects I have due like EVERY DAY!!! Because I learned about google docs, I am stress free. I love that you can just go in and have a nice little conversation in our document and make edits and changes to our project, best thing ever!! I will never go back to Hotmail.


What assignments are we performing? 
We are currently working on gathering research for our future Digital Story Assignment. I am working with Loren. We are doing research on the early exploration of america and the explorers.

So What?
So what does this all mean to me as a teacher, student, colleague today?
Why are we doing this? How can this apply to me today in my other classes and in my life in general? What does this technology mean to me? What does this technology mean to my colleagues? 


I have had the same hotmail account since I was eleven years old. I didn't have any idea that there was anything out there that really could help me as much as Gmail and google docs. I thought that all emails were exactly the same. 
Changing to gmail will greatly change my organizational skills as I continue my education the next two years. I already feel more in control of my schedule. It is great to have the ability to work on projects from home (on my own time!) rather than working around everyone else's busy schedules. I also love that everything you need is on one page.


Now What?
What does this technology mean to my future students? How does this new information change my current schema? How will this information change the type of teacher I will be in the future? What kinds of assignments can I give my students so that they are engaged and so that they can collaborate with other students both within and without the school? How will this help me to become a better future teacher? How will this information help me to become a better future colleague? How can this information change the type of collaboration we engage in ...in our department? This is where you discuss your passions, emotions, and beliefs for the future. 


As I become a teacher I will use googled docs to post a weekly/monthly calendar up for the students as well as the their parents. This will allow them to stay involved with their child's school work and help prepare them. 
Learning about google docs, greatly added to my schema of computer knowledge and group work. I knew how to work in a group, but I didn't know that it could be this easy. I will not go back to using another email account because gmail offers much more to me as a teacher. As I involve my students with this new technology I have learned I will ask them to do a similar type of assignment as we are working on now. I will ask them to create a google document and do research with a classmate over the computer. 


This technology will help me become a better teacher because I will have all of the information I need at my finger tips, Literally! I will be able to keep all of my lesson plans, calendars, art projects, reminders, etc on one simple website. Organization is a very important thing to have as a teacher, if you are not clear in your own mind, how do you expect to express yourself clearly to your students? As a colleague, I will be able to quickly respond to my other colleagues, and work on concerns we have with our students over the computer. It will also be great to be able to easily answer any questions they have or give them any of my material they want.
Google Documents and Gmail have really made adjusting to this CRAZY semester a lot easier. I am so glad that it is an available and free resource for me to use and a student and as a future teacher.