Incorporating Technology into a Lesson Plan, Reading, Writing and Vocabulary Skills.

Learning is lifelong and continuous! A teacher is an advanced student who learns new ideas or reads to understand concepts in order to teach others and facilitate learning. This week has been exceptional and academically challenging to me since I had to figure out several technological issues while using Google Docs! Through out this week, the phrase that kept ringing in my head is ‘seamless integration” from the article What Is Successful Technology Integration?. The other phrase that runs through my head is “the internet here is to stay” in the article Weaving the Web into an EAP Reading Program. This particular phrases made me realize that teacher has to adapt to and adopt technology use in the classroom. This week, as I read through various articles, I learned how to incorporate technology into the lesson and even up with a technology-enhanced lesson plan. I also got exposed to different resources for teaching reading, writing and vocabulary skills. One of the resources that captured my attention was Creative Writing Prompts in which varieties of topics and prompting phrases are advanced for the writing class.

Looking back at my classroom practices, I discovered that I have never taught reading, writing and vocabulary skills by incorporating technology into the classroom yet there were several resources available online. This week was an eye-opener to those resources and I could never explore all within this week. Good enough, technology is here to stay so I can always explore further on, what I have not been in position to explore this week.

I got so immersed using Google Documents and was a little teased when I tried to “paste” and dialog box displayed that copy and past options are not available but I could use short-cuts. Goose pimples ran all over my body and I thought whatever I had typed offline, I could not upload online. However, I got this rectified. I also had a challenge of ensuring that I could change the settings such that my lesson plan document could be shared. As this happened, I remembered the fact that technology can fail, even in the classroom; and the need for “Plan B”.

This week has been exceptional and unique and I look forward to another exciting week of learning more about technology and “webskills”.

Daniel