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Teaching with Technology was a class that focused heavily on the use of technology within gifted and talented classrooms and best practices. I gained many new ideas about how to critically look at my teaching strategies and apply new concepts such as differentiation, R.A.F.T. activities and online group work. I watched a short video by Mr. John Abbott where he discusses how a true learner will build on past material and expand on what has already been learned. I gained the knowledge that a learner will build upon frameworks until a concept is truly learned. Although I did understand the importance of using technology in the classroom, I did not fully comprehend what activities I should be doing to really help my students achieve the next level of understanding. With Teaching with Technology I began to understand that it is OK for students to develop their own ideas and concepts that were not the same as mine. I also began to see how important it was for me to be the facilitator and take a step back for my students learning. It is OK for me to check for students learning but to give the learner more freedom to research and learn in ways they understand.

I use to feel that I needed to be a driving force in my student learning career but I have since learned it is more important for students to be engaged in their own learning, through self inquirery. I stuggled greating in this class with the online group work. I found it very difficult to work with people collaboratively online due to not meeting face to face and time restraints of all team members. Although as time went on we developed a way that we could all contribute at different times and still have ingageing conversations where everyone was a contributer. I learned a great deal from the use of online collaboration such as ways to maneuver around obsticals such as time restratints. We used Googledocs to post questions and reflections for our different responsibilities and whenever we would email one person we would CC all the other team members so everyone in the group would be up to date with how the projects were proceding. Googledocs was a very valuable tool in that we all used it to put the project together as we built our individual parts. Once we had perfected our lessons and activities one of the other team memebers posted it to our website.

I have already begun using what I have learned in my classroom such as having students build projects using Googledocs. My students love this because they already spend so much time on the computer when they get home. Students find that instead on troaling around the internet and chatting endlessly with friend on instant messenger they are developing projects with a group online long after they have gone home. I have had several students state they feel like they learn so much more while on the computer developing new ideas with their friends. Some questions did arise when I was working on this project with my team members such as how do you know if all memebers are pulling their share of the weight of the project? I really need to find out more information about how to avoid one or two group members doing all the work while others in the group that have not put as much effort into it reap the benefits. I am still trying to critically look at this and let all of my students know it is an expectation that everyone in the group works efficiently and honestly.