Educational Technology

When I attended school, the different forms of technology that we used were projectors and the original big back televisions. Teachers always used movies to relay messages and make connections to the assignment that we were working on. There were even times when we would watch the news so that we were aware of the current events happening at the time. I felt that this was an awesome form of technology because it kept students engaged. We were interested in those movies and we were interested in the news.

I wouldn't say that I was interested in the overhead projector. In my opinion, it's kind of boring. You have to sit there and listen to a teacher give most times a boring lesson. Sometimes, they would have the lamented sheets where they had to write with marker and then wipe it off to teach the next thing. Wiping that sheet and putting new information often left the children with idle time on their hands. I'd prefer television. These days laptops, computers and ipads are the way to go in my opinion. Students are highly engaged when they're on electronic devices. I feel as though that's an awesome way to reach them.



All about me and why!

My name is Shaquetta Smith. I was born and raised on the south side of Chicago. Growing up, I attended several different grammar schools and two different high schools. I attended Fort Dearborn, Jane A. Neil, Beasley Academic Center, Morgan Park High School and Thornridge High School. When I first graduated high school in 2001, I attended Chicago State University. I dropped out after my first year because I was not prepared for college. I worked a few different retail jobs The Avenue, Banana Republic and Simply Fashions. I later left Simply Fashions to work for the United States Post Office. After working at the post office for a couple years, I quit to be a stay at home mom. I am currently employed at a Charter School on the south side of Chicago. I am a 5th grade paraprofessional. Once I receive my degree, I would love to stay on my current job and teach middle school Mathematics. The reason that I want to be a teacher is because I love children. Children put a smile on my face because of their pure innocence. I feel compelled to help children because I've been through a lot in my life.

I'm not too familiar with technology. I know how to work Word, Excel and PowerPoint but I can only do the basics. I can browse the web and find information but I'm not always sure if the information holds any validity. I often get confused when navigating through different programs. I hope that this class will enhance what I already know about technology, so that I can be comfortable when I'm using it.

I will admit that before reading the articles, I didn't think that teachers needed to blog. I felt like it was just another way to add onto an already heavy work load. In this day and age, our students are technology driven. They love to be on their electronics day and night. I think that blogging would be a good way to reach them. The articles had a number of good reasons why teachers and students should blog. It's fun was a good reason because now students are looking for fun all the time. The fact that it creates an interactive place in space to communicate with children and their parents was appealing. Also, they would use less paper. The idea that sold me was that the students who were absent could look on there to check their homework. I thought that this idea was pretty cool. I would love to blog when I become a teacher.