Hello everyone I am Alexis. I just completed my third year of teaching kindergarten in Belzoni, MS. Today was the last day for the students and tomorrow will be the last day of school for me. Every teacher loves the summer time but this will be a bittersweet summer for me because I am moving soon and will not be returning to my school in the fall. I will be a K-8 school librarian in another school district. This is my fourth class in the Instructional Technology and Design PhD program and I am so excited to be in this program. I received my undergraduate degree in Elementary Education, from Mississippi Valley State University in 2012. I recently graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in December 2014 with a Masters of Library and Information Science for my AA license. That entire program was online so I have a lot of experience with online classes.
I am a teacher that loves to incorporate technology into everything I do. Having only kindergarten students I was limited with my technology usage but since my new job will allow me the chance to see a more diverse sets of students I can utilize a lot more of the new exciting tools I discover in this class. I use Microsoft office products daily as well as publisher and PDF. Being apart of an online community has required me to be an avid user of the different communication tools daily such as email, discussion board, listserv, and chat. Electronic communication tools are convenient and easy to use. They send any message in instant time without hassle and much effort. A lot of different new tools I was able to use in my class and some I was able to share with other teachers if I couldn’t use it in my own class. I have used blogs, podcasts and wikis in a lot of classes to stimulate actual assignments.
I believe that technology is a leading force in today’s education, the only way to manage its implementation it to be able to accept it and learn to incorporate it. Out of seven kindergarten classes I was the only one with SmartBoard. I taught myself how to use it and found a lot of ways to get my students involved with it until it became an average part of our lessons. Not only did using it helped me to find a million of resources but it helped my students to have better self-management skills. I didn’t have any classroom behaviors problems at all! I love to use technology because the students are use to a more technological advance world then us. To fully teach a child you have to meet them where they are, and if that means bringing technology into the classroom then you have to embrace it. As a school librarian I plan to also become a technology integration specialist for my staff. I want them to be well aware of the new tools and how to implement them. I love sharing new things and it makes me so excited to brainstorm how we could use things for different subjects and assignments. I inspire to deepen my theoretical and research understanding of technology in education by receiving my PhD in Instructional Technology. I need this program to help me become a collaborator, innovator, provider, implementer and administrator of the instructional technology systems.
I am a teacher that loves to incorporate technology into everything I do. Having only kindergarten students I was limited with my technology usage but since my new job will allow me the chance to see a more diverse sets of students I can utilize a lot more of the new exciting tools I discover in this class. I use Microsoft office products daily as well as publisher and PDF. Being apart of an online community has required me to be an avid user of the different communication tools daily such as email, discussion board, listserv, and chat. Electronic communication tools are convenient and easy to use. They send any message in instant time without hassle and much effort. A lot of different new tools I was able to use in my class and some I was able to share with other teachers if I couldn’t use it in my own class. I have used blogs, podcasts and wikis in a lot of classes to stimulate actual assignments.
I believe that technology is a leading force in today’s education, the only way to manage its implementation it to be able to accept it and learn to incorporate it. Out of seven kindergarten classes I was the only one with SmartBoard. I taught myself how to use it and found a lot of ways to get my students involved with it until it became an average part of our lessons. Not only did using it helped me to find a million of resources but it helped my students to have better self-management skills. I didn’t have any classroom behaviors problems at all! I love to use technology because the students are use to a more technological advance world then us. To fully teach a child you have to meet them where they are, and if that means bringing technology into the classroom then you have to embrace it. As a school librarian I plan to also become a technology integration specialist for my staff. I want them to be well aware of the new tools and how to implement them. I love sharing new things and it makes me so excited to brainstorm how we could use things for different subjects and assignments. I inspire to deepen my theoretical and research understanding of technology in education by receiving my PhD in Instructional Technology. I need this program to help me become a collaborator, innovator, provider, implementer and administrator of the instructional technology systems.