Final Reflection

Overall, this course has been so beneficial to many aspects of my learning. It has helped me better understand current technologies that I am using in other classes, such as Googledoc, and has prepared me for technologies that I will be able to incorporate in my own classroom in the future. This class has provided me with a toolbox of technologies that I will be able to draw upon when planning future lesson plans and when presenting new ideas or tools to other teachers. I feel that I started off this class by thinking that I knew a lot about technology, but I realized that there were so many other sites, tools, and features that dealt with technology that I never knew about. I was so surprised with how many resources there are available and how there are similar sites that accomplish the same task, but it is great that there is a variety because different people could prefer different set-ups. I liked that I was able to begin the projects and come back to them later in the semester to add to them or change them. This was helpful when creating my website because it started off with a very basic layout and I became frustrated when trying to add too much at once, so when I was able to take a break from it and come back to it with a fresh mind, I was actually able to figure out more features. I think that the blogging was a really great feature and it was good to have us split up into "houses" to be able to have deeper blogging conversations and not feel so overwhelmed with too many thoughts all at once. I have learned so much through this course that I will be able to carry over in to my future teaching and think that this class has ultimately made me a better teacher because I am aware of all of the resources that are available to teachers to help them make their classroom better.

Rachel C's Highlights

You have done some great work this semester! I enjoyed looking at your highlights. I think it is interesting how there are so many different tools to express similar things, such as you being able to use Jing for this showcase and Weebly for your portfolio, where as I took the route of using other sites and technology tools. I definitely would consider using some of the tools that you used in my future teaching career because they do look like they are much easier to navigate and I know that was the one drawback that I saw with some of my technology choices, where I had some frustrations with how to work with certain technologies. It was great to have you narrate your portfolio as we were looking at it because it helped make it easier to understand how to navigate the pages and create the site. I was very impressed with how much information you were able to incorporate on your page. It looked very professional! I thought it was great that as you took us through your website, you were able to touch on all of the different technologies that you used along the way throughout this class. I think you went above and beyond with the work this semester and it looks like you got a lot out of this course to help improve your use of technology in the classroom. Nice work!

http://www.screencast.com/t/lOkm0tpBp

Jenica Hale's Highlights

I really like how you made the connection of being able to expand on your portfolio throughout your teaching career, which I think is the whole point of making a website like the one's that we made in this class. I think it was really great for you to use your new literacy project as your wiki project because it really does make viewing all of the information so much easier and is a great way for people to add some information they might have found that is different to yours to the site. Your points about using a googledoc, especially in a college setting, were exactly the benefits that I also saw to using this site. I have used it in a lot of classes and find it very beneficial because of time constraints and it takes away the hassle of finding a meeting place. I think the technology tools that you touched on were definitely great aspects to highlight, especially for future teachers, because they are great tools to use to incorporate in the classroom and are easy enough for students to learn and for teachers to keep up with the progress of technology. Awesome job!

http://www.screencast.com/t/ZxzBz65Rnof

Courtney Yee's Highlight

Very nice job on your showcase! I really appreciated how you talked about all of the steps that you took in creating your weebly because I know I personally was lost on how to create a weebly, but watching your highlights helped me see how easy it can be and get a sense for how to set it up in case I wanted to use it in the future. I think that something like this would be really beneficial for future lessons in CEP when introducing new technologies. I think that there were a lot of cool features on your website that would be beneficial for when we become teachers, such as the e-mail form. I also agree with you on the use of GoogleEarth in the classroom and think it is great that you included it in your lesson because it can really help students expand their learning. Your overall presentation of the highlights was great and you seemed very confident with how to navigate your page and explain it to others. Great job!

http://www.screencast.com/users/yeecourt/folders/Jing/media/579b532c-2a1a-48a9-b286-1601b98e23b1

Technology Changing our Classrooms

In my TE 402 class, I read an article that dealt with "think-alouds" and it talked a lot about students getting information online and reading text online, but instead of reading the full thing, it mentioned skimming and scanning the articles. It made mention of setting up online readings with straight to the point headings and putting the most important information at the beginning of the article so it is easier for the students to just brief over the information. This made me think of how technology is altering the set-up of how we were taught on how to set-up stories, information, etc. I know that I was personally taught to spread my details throughout the story or paper and then to save my biggest information paragraph at the end so the reader was left with the lasting impression of everything that should have been gathered from the piece. I feel that with this new technology arising, the current future teachers will slowly become the teachers that we talk about that refuse to change their ways and refuse to progress. How are we supposed to teach students the "original" writing structure when they will constantly be exposed to this new writing format? Since the original set-up will not be seen in everyday examples, they could see no need for it.

Voice Thread highlights

Here is a link to my voice thread which highlights my progress throughout the semester.

http://voicethread.com/?#u1789093.b1972769.i10408151

Wiki usage

Wiki was one of the harder tasks that I had to do for this class. I understood how to set it up, but it just felt so much "bigger" to me to use as opposed to the blogs and other sites we have been exposed to. I felt like I had a lot more space to deal with and trying to fill things was harder, which I guess could be a good thing if you have a lot of information you need to present, as most websites do, but I found it a bit overwhelming. It was, however, very easy to manage and navigate while also being easy to put information on the site. This was different from using a blog because with a blog you can just post your thoughts and the format is already pretty much laid out for you, whereas with the wiki you have the opportunity to build how you want the wiki to look and what you want on each page. I think that if I were to use this in the classroom, I would make sure to use it with older students because I think that it might be a little much for younger students to tackle. I think this would be a great way for them to share projects, similar to how we used it, and they could do it individually or link up with a few group members and all edit it. I also think it could be a cool way to do literacy assignments, so students can post their work and have different tabs for each paper/writing assignment and then students can peer critique others work.