Reaction Paper

I have taken a lot classes in my career as a student. Some classes I have found to full of useless information that is not applicable to every day life. I hate these kinds of classes. Luckily, this teaching and technology class was not one of these classes. I learned so much that can be used to make my life as a teacher easier and to enhance the learning experience of my students. I learned lots of new ways to incorporate technology as a teaching tool that I never would have though of on my own.
Before taking this class, I only thought of teaching the content within my subject area. However, now I have learned that I can teach my content through technology, which allows me to both instill the content in my students in a relavant, modern way and teach them technology skills that they will need to function in every day life.
When creating my unit, I tried to design my assignments in such a way that students could get practice learning to write and using technology. Let's face it, in today's world, knowledge of technology is crucial. How can students expect to get a job in the real world if they don't know how to properly compose an e-mail or if they don't know the proper online protocol? The answer is they won't survive in the real world without a knowledge of these skills. I feel it is important to use techology scaffolding to ensure that my students are prepared for whatever lies beyond high school. College bound kids need to know how to properly set up MLA format in Microsoft word. Kids bound for the workforce need to know a myriad of rules concerning professional techonological etiquette.
For my unit, I wanted to teach my students about how to write for various forms of media. I thought this would be an appropriate topic since the media and techonology are so closely linked. I feel that all too often, students these days are unaware of the affect media has on their lives. They are so conditioned to having the media there that they don't ever stop to think about how it affects their ability to communicate. Similarly, students never stop to think about the different ways to write for media. Writing for a website is very different from writing for a newspaper or an academic paper. I wanted my students to become aware that they must tailor their writing not only suit a particular audience, but also to suit a particular medium.
By incoporating media and technology training into the standard English Language Arts program, we as teachers can prepare students to communicate effectively in a fast paced world. This was my intention with my unit plan, and I hope other teachers will adopt this attitude as well. If all teachers took a class like Teaching and Technology, they would quickly see the important of media and technology training in today's world. I have enjoyed learning about new ways to enhance both my teaching and my students' learning.

Teacher Support

For my teacher support project, I chose to do a newsletter. I like making newsletters because it allows you to be more creative while still providing a lot of information. I wrote my newsletter from the perspective of a teacher offering ways for other teachers to scaffold and structure media learning and literacy in their own classrooms. I included topics such as communication law, why media literacy is important and projects teachers can present as an assessment option in their classes.