Week Ten: Final Reflection

This course has been a great experience for me. I feel I have gained an overall improved sense of how the internet can enhance teaching and learning across a variety of ages. In the various courses I have taken this summer, there has been a resounding emphasis on the number of tools that are at our fingertips and the notion that students are growing up in a digital age. This is so true and we need to make an effort to use this to our advantage. We have the power to tap into our students thinking and creativity outside the confines of a traditional teaching and learning context. There are endless possibilities for teachers to enhance or extend their traditional lessons by using some of the learning tools found on the internet.
As I have mentioned, or at least thought to myself many times throughout this course, it is so important for teachers to take advantage of professional development opportunities in technology. Technology is one of those areas where students could very easily get ahead of us. I always make every effort to stay at least 3 steps ahead of my students (I do mean this literally as I had autistic students who would be down the street if I wasn't 3 steps ahead of them!!). I may not always be sucessful, but I try very hard!

Week 9: Youtube, Podcasts & ebooks

I'm not sure if it was the excitement of almost completing all of the assignments for this course...but I had a hard time with the Week 9 assignments!! The stars were definitly not aligned for me on this one! On Youtube, I spent some time checking out clips that came up for Randy Pausch. He was such an inspiration..there's some really nice tributes on there. Unfortunately I had horrible luck cutting and pasting any of these clips to my Blog..I tried copying from Youtube then pasting into blog using the html/javascript tab..and that would not work. I was totally stumped because I thought I had successfully done this in at least one previous assignment. Maybe something was different with this scenario..whatever it was, I was unable to paste the link into my Blog. Much easier time adding the ebooks to my Googlereader.

Week 8: Online productivity, LibraryThing..

I really liked the online word processing tools and the online library tool. The online word processing would be a wonderful tool to use with students during their writing process. Could access their docs in the classroom, in the computer lab or from home. Also a great tool for teachers whether it be for our school related work or for coursework that we might be taking. We JUST recently uploaded XP onto our computer so I have struggled with Wordpad for the past 5 years...trying to save docs a certain way so that others could read them etc...Again, if only I knew about some of these tools sooner!!! I am hoping to incorporate the Google word processing into my Week 10 lesson plan..fingers crossed that it won't be too difficult to figure out!

Week 7: Wiki's

I love Wiki's!! I just went on vacation with 13 college friends and am so wishing I had known about Wiki's before the trip! The Wiki tutorial is abolutely right about how much more sense it makes than sending emails around to a group. It would be much more efficient for everyone involved to be able to access the information and edit, add or delete as needed. What a great invention! In the classroom I could see this also being a great tool for group work. I could see the students really getting into it and doing their part. It might even create enough of an appeal to inspire the 'reluctant group member' to do THEIR part!

Week Six: Delicious, Technorati & 2.0

Reflections..

• Delicious: I could see this being a very useful tool. Being able to keep track of and organize sites from multiple computers would make our lives so much easier. And also easier to share these sites with colleagues.
• Technorati: Didn't realy do much for me. I even found the demo/intro to be hard to take. I was not exactly reeled in by my visit to the site. I stumbled upon the term "phweet" which I had never heard of, and after reading about it, still didn't fully understand it.
• I found the readings to be really interesting and I agreed with most of what both authors had to say
• Dede: great points about the evolution of education.."shift in the type of knowledge and skills that society values, development of new methods of teaching and learning.."...teachers and students DO need to achieve a balance in how learning takes place. A balance between what Dede calls classical learning/knowing and Web 2.0. Seems to be a new meaning to "meeting kids where they are at"...but absolutely so important!
• 2.0: Why have I never heard the term Web 2.0?? Am I totally out of the loop? Does the "2.0" have anything to do with the fact that we are the year "2000's"?? It's a brave new world and we need to be on the bandwagon!

Week 5: Image generators, Rollyo & 2.0 Award Sites

My favorite part of this week's assignment was the online image generator! It was fun looking around at all the different options and thinking about what to create. I could see students also really enjoying this, especially when given a specific assignment that required them to create an image with a specific purpose in mind. The image generator could be used for so many things...a virtual "self portrait" that the student creates, an illustration for a writing piece, or an illustration to go along with something they have read. It was neat looking through the 2.0 Awards sites and thinking about which ones would be most useful in the classroom. I created a list and posted it to my Blog. With Rollyo I took the opportunity to search the clothing boutiques..I was inspired by Debra Messing's store ideas. If only I had her bank account..

Week 4: RSS Feeds & Newsreaders

The RSS feeds is a great idea...I have never subscribed to a newsreader before, it definitly makes sense. A big time saver for folks that check in with different sites to catch news of interest each day. This would be a great tool to use with students..maybe as amorning class exercise? The class could decide which news to feed..maybe follow one theme for a week.

Flickr and creating a motivational poster

I found Flickr to be very user friendly. Creating an account was quite easy and I was able to do what I needed to do quickly without any problems. I also liked the fact that Flickr is connected to Yahoo, as I already have an email account there. I also found creating the motivational poster to be fairly easy - creating the text and importing the picture to the draft. Also had no problem getting the poster into my blog. Day 3 assignments went well!

Fenway Park: Home Plate & Green Monster

Fenway Park: Home Plate & Green Monster
Originally uploaded by wallyg

Wish I was sitting there right now!

Importing the avatar

Creating the blog very simple...importing/exporting the avatar not so simple....success after multiple attempts!

My first blog

Wow, I have just created my first blog! And it was quite simple! The only exposure I have had to a Blog has been reading those set up by others, mostly related to some favorite television shows. This is my first time posting a message to a blog! How exciting!! My students would be very proud!