Nowadays, people are in a digital age, which means technology are applied in many fields as well as education. As an educator, we need to know how to use educational technology in an appropriate way. Educational technology is helpful to engage students to take part in the class more actively. In other words, educational technology is applied to support teachers rather than replacing teachers in class. Students are the center in class, and teachers are responsible to lead students thinking in a right way and give them some help when they have troubles in learning process. Educational technology is useful in teaching when teachers know how to apply them in an effective way very well.

As a teacher, the most important thing is to be adaptable to the new technology and applied it into a proper context when you are teaching. There is no rigid standard of good teaching method and design of teaching. Good teaching methods are constructed by your own views and beliefs.

My goal is to develop the students’ creations, critical thinking and collaborative competence. In my class, I will try my best to increate a collaborative and flipped learning environments for my students. Compared to the quantitative change, I would like to see my students have qualitative changes in behavior over time.  In my class, I might use some applications like Edpuzzle to let students watfh some videos and read some articles, which can let them know the content of the class in advance. When students are watching the videos via Edpuzzle, they can hear my voiceover and answer some questions when the video is playing.  Teachers can design their own flipped classes which can help students understand learning outcomes more directly.

To develop the social and cognitive presence, I will give more time and opportunities like regularly discussions online and padlet to students to express their own opinions. In addition, when they are communicating with others, it is also a process to construct and confirm their own meaning. The rule of collaborative community is to be real, which means you need to have your own ideas and be critical to others’ opinions. Through the Flipped Learning Community of Inquiry and Community of Practice, students can understand the content of the class better, and their ability of independent learning, critical thinking, innovation and creativity will increase a lot as well.

In my opinion, as the development of educational technology, the teaching method and design and teaching will continue changing gradually. The new models for teaching and learning will come up all the time. As educators, teacher and learners, what we can do is be adaptable them, and construct your own teaching method.

Reference

Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age -2.2 Epistemology and theories of learning. (2nd ed.). Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/chapter/conclusions/

West, R. E. (2018).  Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. (1st ed.). Retrieved from https://lidtfoundations.pressbooks.com/chapter/sociocultural-learning/