Final Reflection

Well personally I feel this final reflection is a little bitter sweet. I really did enjoy this class and coming up with so many different ideas and tools to use in my classroom, however, I will like the extra time because my house is in desperate need of painting.

Coming into this class I felt like I knew a lot. I'm pretty active with using technology so I was hoping this class would provide me with exposure to new tools, and it did. I knew about podcasts, blogs, and wikis. I'd been exposed to doing assignments online and had used Blackboard before.

What I really wanted to pull out of this class was a list of websites and tools that I could use in my classroom to enhance my teaching. I wanted a list of sites that I could post for the students to check out and hopefully find out some new tools to use in my classroom.

What I got from this class was so much more. At first I was nervous about not using Blackboard. It was what I knew and could function with. However, using the wetpaint was much more beneficial. I provides so much more access and tools to use.

I learned so much this summer. From RSS readers to Podcasts I was able to see the use for each of these tools within my classroom. I also really appreciated the readings. I often find myself wrapped up in the world of fiction and forget about reading professionally. By finding the websites that are up-to-date with technology and educational news I was able to add them to my RSS reader and now will hopefully keep up to date with it.

From all of my learning, I plan to implement a lot this year. I plan to use blogs the way they were intended, and provide topics for the students to elaborate on rather than sentence starters. This allows for so much more creativity as well as different strands of conversation. I also plan to have my students follow each other via an RSS reader as well as following some professional blogs. Next, I hope to have my students create podcasts of their stories. I'm often stressing that they need to read their stories out loud to hear how it sounds, Podcasts will provide a purpose for reading it out loud, as well as accountability and editing.

So I now plan to travel into this new school year armed with many more tools and knowledge to challenge my students both academically and creatively. I hope that my classroom can gain as much as I did from this class.