Week Eight: Final Thoughts

In the past eight weeks, I feel I have had many "Aha!" moments--all of which occurred while learning a new technology skill. Specifically...I was pleased with myself when I figured out how to remove the navigation bar on the left side of my ePortfolio homepage. I also really enjoyed learning more about wikis and how to create one. The same is true for the Jing presentation. I don't know at this point where I will go from here with all of this newfound information. I don't plan to return to the working world for at least another three years, but when I do decide to work again, I would like to use as much of what I have learned in this class as possible. If I get a job in a library, I expect that I will use wikis and blogs to share books, reviews and other information with my students, as well as to allow my students to share their thoughts and ideas with others. There's a good chance that my wiki will include a Jing presentation of some type that tells students how to add information to the wiki. However, if I teach kindergarten, which I hope to do before I become a librarian, I might have to think a bit harder about how to use the types of technologies I have learned about in this class with 5 and 6 year olds. I know it can be done, but I haven't even begun to think about the possibilities at this point.

Week Seven: Reflection

For this week's technology project, I decided to create a lesson using Google Earth, Microsoft Office Publisher, and wikis. Google Earth has so much to offer. I spent way too long exploring the shipwrecks that are found beneath the oceans surface on Google Earth. I also watched a few video clips about some of Jacques Cousteau's underwater adventures. I could have spent the entire day just looking around, so I figured that students would find this just as interesting...and could probably accomplish WAY more with it than I could. ☺ I chose to use a wiki for this activity because I really have enjoyed using our class wiki to share the things I have been learning and to look at what other people are learning also. So...again I figured that students would enjoy this type of presentation for the brochures they created. As for using Microsoft Office Publisher to create the brochures, I figured this would be one of the easiest means for making a brochure because many templates are offered for users to simply plug in their own information or the user can begin working from scratch.

Although I am not teaching right now, I will keep this lesson in mind when I go back to the classroom. When I was in the classroom before, I didn't use much technology in my lessons because I knew how to use very little technology. I still am not proficient in many technology aspects, but I do have more confidence when it comes to trying to learn something new. I hope to be able to successfully integrate lots of technology into my daily instruction so that my students and I are continuously learning. I also expect that my students will be able to teach me a thing or two about using all sorts of technology...things they will have been using since they were in diapers, I'm sure . ☺