A Final Blog

So, interestingly, I thought I was done blogging. While looking at my dashboard, I found the final number, and it said 12. So I was thinking I was completely done, then I look at my blog and realize, I only have 8. So, back to blogging. Sorry for these all being in one day, but it was an EMERGENCY!!!

I thought that the final was really effective at getting us to use the technology that we've learned about, and I can totally see even getting preschoolers to tell me what they've learned about something in a Podcast and using it as an assessment piece. Also, I think it would be a good way to combine the best answers (to try and get them to be concise and do the best that they can) and put them in a video with some pictures taken over the course of a unit. Also, it was interesting to see how quickly we could do it, given our time frame. Amanda and I had so much fun putting together the podcast, and it was such a natural way to incorporate it!

I thought that the biggest lesson of all was just that when a new technology comes out, don't be shy. Try to find a way to use it to your benefit in the classroom! When cell phones first came out, I doubt that anyone thought that they could use this in their classroom, but I've had classes where we texted answers in and got to see a live feed of them on a website. I don't think that a lot of people would have thought that blogs had much of an educational value, but we've been using them for the last two weeks. I don't think that a lot of people who have thought that iPods could be useful, but we've used them to record a digital story, in some cases, browse the internet, and we used them as part of an assessment today.

I never would have thought to use Comic Life as part of a lesson, but now I have come up with tons of ways that it could be used. I think that KidPix is really fun, and we've used it in lots of beneficial ways throughout this class.

I also thought that it was fun to see how fast everything came together. I honestly don't remember much about 201, and I certainly didn't remember how to burn a DVD or use KidPix, but I figured it out really quickly. It was really fun to learn how to do all of this again. And, the torture that I recall in doing the digital story in 201 was replaced with a pleasurable and fun experience now. I thought that the process of the digital story was so much fun, and I had a lot of good experiences with gathering the pictures and doing the script. It was an interesting experience altogether.

I'm so excited to use all of this technology in a new way in the classroom, from what seems really high tech, like an iPad or a smartboard, to doing things that we've always done (but just doing it in a new way), like digital cameras and PowerPoint. I was also introduced to a lot of new things, like wikis (how easy is that?!) and Ning (which I'm excited to figure out more about) to TitanPad (so much better than a Word Document) and TodaysMeet (which I think would be so useful during an inservice day or something like that, to see what everyone else is thinking about all of this stuff, and the administrators would get a good idea of what concerns were and maybe some more honest feedback).

Altogether, I'm so glad that I took this class. I think it will prove to be useful in my future career and I think that I'll get a lot more understanding out of it later on. I think that when new technologies are out, I'll be trying to find ways to use it in the classroom, and I hope that my experiences in this class will make me a valuable resource for coworkers and the school system that I end up working in.