As an elementary teacher, digital technologies play an important role in my current line of work. In my classroom there is a large Promethean board that I use daily to assist with students' learning. My team members and I create Google Docs for our math lessons to show students the initial problems and work on the board. We are able to write on the board and zoom in so students can visualize the problems easily. This allows us to not have to create anchor charts for every single lesson. We also use Google Docs for other subjects, shared brainstorming pages, and Google Sheets for tracking data. One benefit of Google Docs/Sheets is that they save automatically and you can easily share work with other teammates. You can work on one document simultaneously and we can re-use documents from previous years.
As a school we have a social media account that we use to communicate with families and share highlights at school. This is a great way for families to stay connected with the events at school. It also lets the school shout out scholars who have won awards. Within the classroom, we use an app called ClassDojo to track students' behaviors and communicate with families. It works similarly to social media where we can post pictures or announcements for families to view, like, or comment. They can also track their scholar's behavior points and easily send messages to teachers. This is a fun and easy way to build relationships with families and keep them invested in their student's learning experience.
It's advantageous for me to develop skills to effectively use current digital technologies because we live in an age of technology. Technology is present in almost every aspect of our daily lives and we use it constantly. Education is moving towards using technology more frequently, and it would be helpful if I knew how to use these digital tools to share them with colleagues, students, and families. These digital skills can also be transferable across different fields.
