Blog and Technology in History
Here we go! The beginning to the educating blog, I have seen many blogs that have inspired me in this goal to be a 21st century educator. Teaching has evolved with the generations and has inspired students across the world to become leaders and innovators. My job as an educator is to bring the past events and details to life for students, giving them the opportunity to see how civilization created monumental moments in the world. I have four goals with history in education; to give a voice to even the smallest event/person, allow students to debate and discuss the events, as the teacher I will strive to take notice of how we can incorporate technology in advancing historical facts for the public, and finally, we will make history personal, we will view family history and American history, allowing students to have the chance to feel the connection within their heritage in the events that we learn about. Follow our year into the historical facts, and research that we will be conducting!
I envision that the beginning of my educational career blog will sound similar to my words above.
My thoughts have taken many turns with the idea of technology with history education, in the beginning of choosing my field I wanted to keep my nose in the old, not wanting to dive into the future. Recently, as a student I have had the chance to experience how technology can help give life to pieces of history that could be forgotten. Technology is truly helping history along. Having experienced working with audio recordings, instant messaging via blackboard, and videoconferencing, all these are very important tools to have knowledge on and the ability to use these successfully will help educators.
I prefer using audio recordings and video. I have found that instant messaging though can be great tools for other educators, is a tool that I have not fully embraced at this time as an educational tool. I have used audio recordings previously to work on online classes and also make recordings as a paraprofessional to my students I worked with. This is a great tool to use for encouragement but also with students that have the disabilities in learning and need that vocal reminder for certain tasks. Videoconferencing is great, we can use it to attend classes if we are unable to for a medical emergency or personal reason. The student can feel interactive in the class still, and maintain the same level of learning. Videoconferencing still gives a unique touch to the course giving the student and educator the ability to connect without the limitations that a classroom would hold. I would not be suggesting that students should be missing class and attending only in this form, I can see the academic benefits that are here by using these tools in the proper way.
Having the chance to work on this blog and use these communication tools this week, has given me food for thought. I plan to strive more in using technology with my field, giving history the opportunity to advance with the ages and with me as a leader in the field. I look forward to working on my educator blog in the future.
