ETEC is getting me going....

Hi! I'm Lei Anne.  Here I am, 48 years old, and finally learning about blogging!

My family is the most important aspect of my life. I am a wife, mother, and student. My husband is wonderful and supportive. My two oldest children are adults and my youngest just got his driver's license! Loki, my Boxer dog, thinks he is one of my children. I finally go to church because I want to. Gardening is one of my hobbies -- I love roses and hydrangeas and I'm learning about Rose of Sharon trees. A good murder mystery or Words With Friends is how I like to relax. Movies also get top-rated billing from me on the good-ways-to-relax list.  And, after all these years, I am hoping to finish my degree and get my teacher certification...and that is where most of my time goes these days!

My ETEC class is really getting the ball rolling and teaching me about some technology that I was not previously that familiar with...like blogging! It's my belief that technology should be thoroughly integrated into classroom learning these days. Present-day students spend so much of their time communicating and socializing technologically that it is really more of a requirement of a successful teacher.  How can you get a child's attention when you can't even speak their language?? My youngest son texts, plays video games, emails, skypes, chats, researches, and designs online. His textbooks are being transferred to a digital format and he reads for fun on his iPad.  Many forms of technology are necessary for successful teaching today.

I am not yet familiar with which technologies have been successfully adapted to the classroom, but that is part of what I hope to learn through this class. It's one thing to do some of these things personally, but I imagine it is a little different when it is in a classroom setting and involves twenty to thirty students. This is the sort of thing I am expecting to learn in this class so that I can integrate it into my teaching methods when I am in the classroom.