Personal+Reflection

As an educator, I believe it is imperative that technology is used to enhance the learning experience of all students, from the primary grades and beyond. Students of the 21st Century demand the need to be challenged at varying cognitive levels in the skills of viewing, reading, and comprehending text and information in all subject areas. Moreover, in order to help our students become productive members of society, we must help them develop the skills needed to disseminate information of varying forms, including media and technology. This will help them become life-long learners, both now and in the future.
 * __Philosophy of the Integration of Technology in the Classroom__

__Technology Integration__**
 * In schools, educators must consider some of the barriers they might face: lack of resources and time and effort required to learn various technology resources to integrate in the classroom. However, if the community works as a whole, students will "take responsibility for actively pursuing information and ideas both in print and digitally, understanding those ideas and how they apply, drawing conclusions and developing new applications, and share these new understandings with others" according to the American Library Association. The benefits of technology will allow students to access the tools of a global society to provide opportunities to collaborate, understanding varying perspectives, work effectively in groups, and share learning products and processes.

**__**Evaluation**__
 * When evaluating students on their computer literacy, educators must use an on-going and consistent task. Students should be monitored in their progress with information literacy understanding throughout their schooling. This data could then be used to develop lesson plans to better help students with various skills. According to the American Library Association, "information literacy has progressed from the simple definition of using reference resources to find information. Multiple literacies, including digital, visual, textual, and technological, have now joined information literacy as crucial skills for this century." When creating lesson plans, perhaps educators could place more emphasis on the process over the product when retrieving information from various types of sources to promote information literacy skills. **


 * __Issues__**
 * Some of the issues schools face with technology integration can involve the digital divide. When considering socioeconomic levels of all students in the district/building, educators must be attentive to the assignments and requirements on various projects, especially those that require technology. Educators should cater to the needs of all students and this can be done by offering class time in the library and also issuing passes to the library and computer labs during study time. Other issues that may arise during classroom integration of technology include safety. Sometimes educators cannot simply assume that all students are aware of safety issues when using the Internet and other tools. Sound efforts should be made to ensure proper usage of resources are implemented. Also, an accessible use policy (AUP) should be enforced in all school settings, not only by librarians, but also educators of all subject areas.

**__**Final Thoughts**__ After experiencing various technology tools over the past few weeks, I feel that I have built several foundations of understanding. I feel that I have a better sense of the purpose, utilization, and implementation of various tools in the classroom. Some of these include: blogs, podcasts, social bookmarking, wikis, iMovie, and other web 2.0 tools, Although I may not understand all the dimensions of use, I certainly believe that I am now capable of exploring and excited to integrate them into my middle school classroom in the future.