Looking at my Journey

I feel I have come a long way in this class.  I do not think of myself as a very tech savvy person and had not used any of the tools in this class before.  Also I have never really worked with a Mac outside of just typing a paper.  I still feel uncomfortable on a Mac, but I can certainly see some of the benefits they offer.  It is nice that all the programs on them are so compatible and it is easy to move items, pictures, and sounds between programs with ease.

During this class we covered a lot of tools!  Some of these tools I really enjoyed while others I did not.  The Web 2.0 tool that my group had for our presentation, Glogster, was a tool I thoroughly enjoyed.  I am not a very artistic person so using an online tool to make a poster made it a lot cleaner and organized.  I know that there will be students of mine like this that will also benefit from being able to use computer to construct projects rather than traditional methods.  In a sense it puts all students on an even playing field since one student can’t get by on a project simply because they are a good artistic.  If a student puts the time in on with one of these tools like Glogster, they can make a nice project.  Tools that I feel the same way about are Animoto, Storybird, and Pixlr.  One tool I did not really like was Timetoast.  I felt a lot was missing from this tool to make it effective.  I think it is a good idea and has some potential to be fixed into a great tool, but as it is now just missing too much for me.  I think that not being able to put in BC dates is a huge flaw that I cannot get over.  Also every date needs a specific date which is something I do not like.  Some events do not occur on one day or even one year.  This is a tool I will most likely not use.  I do not see the purpose in using Picasa Web Album either over other slide show tools like Power Point or Google Docs.  Overall though there were a lot of great things we learned in this class that I will have to keep in mind going forward into my teaching career.

I believe the most important thing I learned this semester was how to make a flipchart.  In my placement at an elementary school right now they use a flipchart almost every day.  I can easily see how being able to construct my own will be a huge help for me.  I used the flipchart I created in this class to teach a lesson at my placement and the students loved it.  It kept them so engaged through the entire lesson.  The students also learned a lot during the lesson, and I don’t think I could have taught them the topic as well without it.  Creating a flipchart can be time consuming, but with Promethean Planet teachers have a terrific resource to lessons.  I know that is where my mentor teacher found the ones he used in the class.  He would look up a flipchart in the subject we were covering, go through it, and pick out the parts he wanted to use.  It was quick and simple, but highly effective.  I know already of all the tools I learned in class, creating and using a flipchart is going to be the one that I use the most in my career.

Now I am at the end of the class and I have so much to show for it.  I have my website, my video, my flipchart lesson, Web 2.0 artifacts, and this blog.  There are not a lot of classes that leave you with so much to show for it.  This is why I believe this was one of the most useful classes I have had.  I had my ups in down in this class for sure, but I think I ended with a good understanding of a lot of tools.