Wow, the end has come to the course already! I remember the first night feeling lost and almost ready to break down and cry! I felt overwhelmed at the illiterate mind set I had with technology. While being a stay-at-home mom for 10 years, I knew things had changed, but never guessed the dramatic way it had all changed. After completing the course, I feel that I still have things to learn and will continue to do so in my own personal education. However, I feel so much better after completing the course and learning all that I learned. I am excited about incorporating what I have learned into my classroom. In fact, I have already! We now have our own classroom blog!! I created it to use with student assignments. I create the post (assignment) and they give their answers through their comments. This way, I can also monitor their comments and approve before posting them. The kids seem very excited and eager to do their homework!
I would have to say that the classroom blogging has been my favorite of all of the things we have covered in the course. I have also benefited personally from the Professional Learning Network. I love being able to find a mentor at any given time rather it be from communicating directly or just reading others comments and posts. I also have enjoyed learning how to set up my I-Google page. This is a wonderful way of organizing your educational resources. The Comments4Kids was fun and a creative way to use kids' thoughts and ideas. This is one goal of mine to start with my own class. I would also love to engage in the Skpe with my students. I think these would both be fun and exciting experiences for them. As an over protective mom and teacher, I just want to ensure safety with my students. So, I do not want to initiate something until I know it is safe. Safety from outside the classroom is important to me as well as the feelings of the children. Too much flexibility with technology can become a sword fight among students. The podcasts and videocasts we made were fun and beneficial for me to watch. I was able to get several ideas and links to websites based on the presentations done by my classmates.
The things I really did not gain a lot from was the I-tunes University. However, if I were at that level of teaching, I would most likely participate with it. I also did not gain much from the grade book spreadsheet assignment. This was because we do not use it in our school due to having the convenience of STI. I really cannot think of anything that I did not learn and expected to learn. As for the boredom question, I did have time to get bored! I found all of the assignments useful and I am very excited about incorporating them with my students!
Best of all, I really enjoyed getting to know my classmates. It was such a friendly atmosphere and working with them was a pleasure. I would have to say this was much better than sitting with a book, listening to lectures and studying for tests!
Last, yet not lest, thanks goes out to Ms. Averitt for all of her encouragement and instruction time. When we felt overwhelmed or incapable, she was there as our cheerleader. That is the one strength every teacher must have to build the success of a student's ability to learn and achieve.
Chrissy, it has been my pleasure. I am so happy to hear you are already using things you learned in class in your own classroom now. Never stop learning. You now have the tools and resources to help you further your career through the use of technology. Good luck.
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