WEEK ONE

I have entered this course overwhelmed by a major lack of confidence in my ICT abilities. Before starting uni, I thought that I was pretty computer literate - however after seeing how some of the younger students seem to easily create complex presentations with what appears to be little effort, my beliefs about my abilities have changed. Making the decision to complete this subject was a difficult one: on one hand, I know that I need to expand my understanding of which technologies are available, and how they can be used as this is such a large area of reform in education; however on the other hand I am concerned about my academic results in a course where I have such limited knowledge.

Although there is a push to use ICT's more in the classroom, I believe that students spend too much time in front of what I call 'the square box' - either the computer or TV. I have constant disagreements with my fifteen year old son about how much time he should be spending playing his much-loved "World of Warcraft". While he argues that he is being social by playing with his friends, my idea of playing with friends is that it happens in person, exploring the real world.

The idea of being able to create lessons that involve ICT is daunting to me. Most of my practicum experience has been in schools with either limited ICT resources, or teachers who have limited ICT knowledge. Some of the best lessons I've seen presented which involve ICT utilise learning objects from the Learning Place. It's unfortunate that we can't have access to this, as it would be great to explore and try out some of the ideas on there.
During this first lesson, I was surprised about how easy it was to access and start my own blog and website shell. Perhaps I was being a little tough on myself to think that I would never be able to get my head around all these things.

I was also surprised to see the range of technologies available...  some really fun, practical and engaging tools that even I would enjoy introducing into the classroom! The one which stood out the most for me was the interactive table, where students were able to manipulate visual images by sorting, comparing etc. I can see that this could be a useful technology in classroom, especially in the earlier years.

Keeping up-to-date with the quickly and constantly growing list of new technologies and how others are using them (through PD's and the wide range of discussion groups on the net) will be important in my future teaching career, as I do not want to be a teacher who falls behind and struggles to catch up.

So, against my expectations; I enjoyed learning about tools available; and also realised that I was not completely hopeless when it came to using ICT's myself (however, Twitter confuses me - is it something we post on, or where we read what others have to say? I thought twitter was where celebrities shared all their daily insights with the world?!?!)

Obviously, there is still more to learn, but now I am looking forward to the journey! 8)