What Makes a Good Teacher?

What is quality teaching and how can it be assessed? What five questions would you ask if you wanted to know how well you were doing as a teacher?

Quality teaching is engaging for students and adaptable to all students' strengths. All multiple intelligences are addressed and time is devoted to evaluating and edited lessons for constant improvement. Teaching is hands on, applicable to real life, and promotes inquiry for children. It address each student as an individual and a human being before all else. Quality teaching is not just academics, but it is providing children with skills to thrive in the workforce and obtain all their life goals, all while keeping personal morals. This could be assessed through interviews with the children and other teachers. Also, self-evaluation through video taping lessons and reflection upon improvements.

Questions to Evaluate my Teaching:

• Did all students feel welcomed, incorporated, valued, and engaged in the classroom community?
• Do the stduents understand and master the content being taught?
• What are my strengths as a teacher (presentation, lesson development, student engagement)?
• What are my weaknesses as a teacher (presentation, lesson development, student engagement)?
• Does my teaching incorporate the students' interests and promote life long learning by sparking further inquiry?

Technology in Lesson Planning

Think about a lesson that you have developed in your tenure as a student in the college of education and describe how you could integrate technology into the lesson in order to promote student understanding and engagement.

The easiest and most recognizable  form of technology is the use of computers and software programs. Integrating websites, games, and presentation tools are easy ways to use technology to make lessons engaging for students and core concepts exciting. Content becomes more relatable when lessons incorporate their modern interests such as television and video games, which is possible with the use of computers. SmartBoards can also be incorporated into lessons because they easily display visuals, show videos and make interactive activities/virtual worksheets. Also, document cameras and projectors can be used by both students and teachers to model and demonstrate their process of learning by showing their work to the class or magnifying it to be more visible form.

Technology Integration

Describe, based on what you have learned from your research and from the presentations of your classmates, the most beneficial, in terms of student understanding and engagement, methods for integrating technology in the learning environment?

The most beneficial forms of technology for students are ones where the children are the users creating and presenting  classroom content. When children are actively involved in their learning, motivational levels increase and students are excited about their learning. When the teacher is the only subject using the technology, students disengage and are not in control of their own learning experience. Technology should be easy to use and demonstrate levels of knowledge which push their ability levels. The more technology incorporates physically activity the more beneficial it will be for students who have small attention spans and the need to move to learn. Technology helps to bring abstract concepts to life in virtual real life situations to better prepare students for the world outside the classroom.