As this course, Supporting Information Literacy and Online Inquiry in the Classroom, comes to a close, I reflect on everything I have learned about helping my students use and understand the internet and how to use it appropriately to research. Teaching new literacy skills is something that I see more teachers focusing on now and in the future. These new skills are essential for students to be successful in their future. They are also essential for making sense out of the mass flow of information available at our finger tips everyday. I’ve had a few revelations about teaching new literacy skills. One is that students come into your classroom at all different levels of computer knowledge, so it is imperative to be able to scaffold lessons appropriately. The teacher should also model different techniques for finding information frequently. If students see how you are thinking as you are modeling for them; it helps them to understand the reasoning behind it.
Everything I have learned in this course will definitely influence my teaching practice. I have had the opportunity to create a wonderful inquiry-based unit plan on Weather. It has given me experience with creating lessons and assessments on developing essential questions, locating and evaluating internet resources, synthesizing resources, and communicating effectively. I know more concretely understand how to design lessons for each step of the research process and tailor them to students needs. I think my greatest learning experiences during this course were evaluating websites and assessment strategies.
I have several professional development goals. My first goal, of course is to get my own classroom and move up from being a teacher’s assistant. Once I do that, I would like to take part in some type of teacher group (or possibly even lead one) on integrating technology. I would like for teachers to have the opportunity to share what they are doing with technology in their own classrooms and also experiment with new things. In order to do that, I would probably talk with other teachers at the school I would be working at and see if I could get enough that are interested. I would also have to talk with administration to see about getting the resources we need to learn ourselves.
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