Intro to Technology

What I Learned:
I was glad to learn that there are national standards being implemented for both teachers and students.  These NETS are vital when you consider society's expectation that students will be technologically literate by the time they graduate.  It is the responsibility of teachers to ensure that their students are ready to become contributing members of society, and having nationally accepted initiatives makes it much more likely that students will be uniformly prepared to take on the challenges of the "real world".  Not only can technology use in the classroom benefit my students' ability to learn, but it can allow me to communicate with parents, manage my classroom, and generally work more efficiently.
How to Implement This in My Classroom:
I plan to meet these standards in my classroom by using a wide variety of technologies in my daily teaching.  To be able to model and understand up to the minute technologies, I will need to conduct frequent research, attend professional development courses, and generally seek out continuous education.  I am not yet teaching, so I don't know exactly what age my students will be or what their technological capabilities will be, but I plan to imcorporate as many types of technology into my lessons as possible.  I hope to create a class website which will allow me to communicate with parents as well as students, providing such information as a calendar of events, unit descriptions, brief tutorials, and important due dates.  Most elementary students should also be capable of mastering the Microsoft Office suite, digital cameras, and various internet resources.  Projects will require students to do a combination of traditional reading/writing as well as create PowerPoints, blogs, or brochures.
Potential Challenges:
One of the major challenges to implementing new technology in the classroom is funding.  It can be difficult to convince schools to buy new computers, software, or hardware like cameras for use in the classroom.  Another major difficulty is that some students may not have technology at home, which can make it more difficult to incorporate technology into projects or to use technology to communicate with parents.
How to Overcome These Challenges:
To meet the funding challenge, I could start by getting advice from fellow educators on how to most effectively use/learn new technologies (and which ones are most useful) to minimize the amount of requests I am making from the district.  I could also make an effort to utilize items already in the classroom or encourage students to bring items in from home for use at school, like cameras.  I could also do a fundraiser.  For the students without technology at home, I could give some time to work on projects in class and stress the importance of obtaining a library card to use the public computers.