Technology Autobiography

Prior to college, I had very limited experience with technology. I used the computer primarily for research on the internet, windows, and instant messenger. In high school, technology was not used very frequently within the classroom. Technology was only used in the cases with PowerPoint or television for showing videos during class. We had one computer class, Computer Science that very few students took. Other than that one class, the computer lab was not used very often by teachers for class purposes but rather used by students for other activities. It surprises me that technology has been such a small part of my educational life but such a large part of my life outside of school.

Since entering college I have had a greater deal of exposure to technology. My second year, I took the class for teaching with technology. It was in that class that I was exposed to different types of technology that I had never experienced in an a classroom setting before. In this class I was introduced to the SmartBoard for the very first time. I have become very fascinated with the SmartBoard and learning how it can be used within a mathematics classroom. I have had more experience using the SmartBoard in my pedagogy classes. I am excited to give students more opportunity to get hands on experience with the material and a chance to see and learn the material in 3-dimensions with technology.

I have not had a lot of experience implementing technology in a classroom yet. My only experience that I had occured last semester during one of my teaching sessions for 488. I learned the hard way about how important it was to check all of my work before I present it to the students. It is much easier to fix a wrong number or error on the board, just simply erase and start over. However, with a PowerPoint presentation, those errors are not as easy to fix. My attempt to help the students understand a more complicated concept by presenting it using PowerPoint did not go as well as planned and I ended up reverting to the white board. From this experience I am a little more apprehensive and nervous about using technology when I teach, but I am more certain about the postivie benefits for the students' learning that I want to overcome these fears.