Strengths & Weaknesses

As I went through the UNI survey and read through the NET standards I realized my biggest strength is that I have an idea of what all of these technologically rich tools are, but my biggest weakness is that I don’t know that much about them. I feel that if these skills will be useful to me in the classroom I will need to understand them completely in order to teach my students how to use the applications. Just knowing about the application will not be enough, my goal is to research the various applications and find ways that it can enhance classroom learning, and help students to more fully understand material that is being studied. I found a series of online workshops at http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/alt/basic/cover.htm that would help me to just understand the basic applications I will be using in my classroom. Once I have learned the basic applications I will be a more effective teacher and also know how those applications can benefit my students in their learning.

Another weakness of mine is that I do not have a very open or creative mind when it comes to incorporating technology in the classroom. As I read through the NET standards I understood how technology would be helpful when used in all of the areas that are talked about, but I was completely lost on how I would incorporate technology to perform those tasks. My goal is to learn how to apply the knowledge that I have about technology in the classroom and to teach effectively using technology. I found a website that is dedicated to just that at http://www.wtvi.com/teks/workshops.html. I think this workshop would be really helpful because it would be giving me examples of how technology can be applied in a real world classroom and help me see how I can integrate the ideas they give me into my own lesson plans.

One of my strengths is that I know how to communicate well using technology which I think will be a huge benefit in my future classroom. I believe that using technology as a communication tool makes me more effective and efficient. I will have to work on using more appropriate computer language though. One of the UNI survey questions was if I knew and used correct computer terminology which is something I could learn more about and practice in my teaching.