Strengths and Weaknesses

The field experience that my partner (Sarah-Jane Martin) and I had with technology was great. I feel that I learned a lot from the experience. I have a Dell laptop and Sarah-Jane has a Mac. We did a lot of the planning and making of our digital story with Sarah-Jane's Mac because that is the system that the school uses as well as our cooperating teacher. We made our digital story in iMovie because it was very easy to use. It was discouraging to realize that in order to show the students the information that we wanted them to know and see, I needed to have a Mac, not my computer. The classroom used an Elmo which was great and the only hook-ups we had were for a Mac.
In order to make this weakness a strength, I feel that if I had more knowledge about Mac's I could have been more confident in the use of the technology we had available for use in the classroom. I found a video on http://www.apple.com/ that goes over the basics of a Mac's anatomy and how to use one. I also found a free workshop that is called Getting Started with a Mac. The workshop goes over the ease of using a Mac, the benefits of using a Mac and basic applications. I like my PC but I am definitely wishing that I had spent the money to get a Mac since it has so many great uses. I felt a little handicapped since I wasn't comfortable using a Mac like my partner was and the cooperating teacher. Sarah-Jane was great at showing me how it all works but I think going to a workshop as well as watching the video mentioned above would be very beneficial to me.
One of my weaknesses from the UNI survey was demonstrating awareness of resources for adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs. As I was searching for information on learning more on Mac's I found that Apple has a section called Apple in Education - Special Needs where it discusses the special features that Mac's have to help students with the following disabilities: Literacy and Learning Disabilities, Vision Disabilities, Hearing Disabilities and Physical and Motor Skill Disabilities. It is an online tutorial that explains things like the iChat where hearing impaired students can see others using sign language to speak to them. As a teacher, I could have the lessons put into sign language and the student could understand what is being taught along with the rest of the class as long as he/she had access to a Mac computer. This is just an example of some of the information that is on the online tutorial found at: http://www.apple.com/education/special-education/.
One of my strengths was being able to easily learn how to use the technology that was available such as Elmo at the school that we were at. It was difficult at first because it wasn't something that I was used to but once I had used it a few times, I really loved it! I think it is a great tool because we were able to use it to show pictures from our books on WWI and WWII rather than having to print them on a transparency like we had to do in the past. I may not know how to use the technology initially but I am able to learn how to use it quickly.