Final Reflection for IT 3210

Final Reflection

This class has helped fortify my decision to come back to school to teach.  The tools that we learned to use will help us get students involved and excited about otherwise mundane content.  This course gave us the opportunity to explore different ways of conveying our lessons.  Ways of keeping students engaged and eager to learn. 

The days of reading pages upon pages of text and memorizing content are long gone.  I will take these tools and use them to instruct.  I’m also excited about having students use these same tools to convey their own understanding of the curriculum.

One regret I have is not having used Edmodo more during this class.  I will do my best to keep up with posts of my classmates and colleagues so that I don’t fall too far behind the digital curve.  I would even consider taking this class again in the future so that I can keep up with all the new developments that may arise.  It would be a great refresher course to stay up to date with the progress of web 2.0 tools.

Thanks to all my classmates for a great, albeit short, semester.  I look forward to keeping in touch in the future and wish you all the best of luck!  

Coming down to the wire!  One official week left and then finals week.  This semester went by extremely fast.  I learned a lot, and am sure these things will help me be a better teacher in the future.

I tested out a few digital storytelling sites and programs this week.  Voicethread has a great demo on how to create a voice thread presentation in less than a minute.  Here's the link.

The digital storytelling tool I ended up using for A4 is Comic Life.  You can get a free 30 day trial at plasq.com

This program has many formats to choose from, including many education friendly ones.  The pictures that you want to use can be dragged and dropped into the proper places with ease.  Now if only this program could make me funnier.  Its a good program and I highly recommend it.

This last week I look forward to looking at all of my classmates individual work on their LEPs.  We've had some great presentations this semester and I'm sure this last week won't disappoint.

Week 3

Reflection #3

               This last week was a bit hectic, but I still managed to learn a few new things.  My web presentation on Voicethread went well.  My research for the presentation gave me a few ideas on how to include this tool as an educator in the future. 

               I have to say that Wordle was a bore to me at first.  This was mainly because of my concentration in math and science.  This week, I decided to include it in a science lesson plan.  My hope is that I can use it to give a broad sense of what the upcoming lessons may be about. 

               One of the things that I find helpful in this class is the pace at which we are preparing our lesson plans.  I find that doing one piece at a time has helped me immensely.  In other classes, I seemed to get overwhelmed when I had to submit my lesson plans.  This speed is great for me.

               For my clip of the week, here is my main man, Bill Nye, the science guy, discussing Sophia.org!

Reflection 2

Reflection 2

I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the class meeting online went on Thursday.  I was a bit apprehensive, but everything went splendidly minus a few minor hiccups.

The presentations of web 2.0 tools were great.  It helped me with my upcoming presentation immensely.  My classmates gave me some great ideas on how to proceed with my plans. 

Last week didn’t have too many surprises or disappointments.  If anything, last week introduced me to some new tools for the teacher toolbox.  Long gone are the days of spending hours and hours in the library combing through volumes of paper looking for information.  That  last sentenced made me sound like my parents.

I’m excited about promethean boards.  They are a fabulous tool for our schools.  To go from writing on the board like my teachers, to linking to interactive media is fabulous.  I think I’m going to stop now due to my sounding like my grandpa telling “In my day…” stories. 

Looking forward to the next couple of weeks.