"Inside the Tunnel" by Autowitch from Flickr CC License CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Link: http://bit.ly/1y71HvR
The end is near! I will be honest. I am very happy that this is my last post. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to create and learn a variety of blogging websites as well as how they work. I am grateful to have utilized a blog to network and share the work I have created throughout the semester. However, I highly dislike writing. When I am asked to write and am not given a specific topic, I freeze. I push the assignment all the way to the bottom of the list. That being said, I will not spend my entire last post, blogging about how much I hate blogging.
Let's reflect a bit about the past semester in Educational Technology. I definitely dabbled in areas that were uncomfortable such as Creative Commons licenses and had fun creating with new presentation programs such as Prezi. I am looking forward to bringing Prezi into my classroom and having my students work on Digital Storytelling projects throughout the year. I will admit that I am disappointed in the lack of ready-to-use classroom ideas I feel I am leaving this class with. I predicted to be completing this class with a head full of new ideas that I couldn't wait to use with my students. Not only that, but I figured this would occur weekly. Instead, I found myself wasting large amounts of time reading 45-page chapters on dry technology information.
Perhaps these jewels of classroom ideas are waiting for me within the Twitter feed that we were "feeding" throughout the semester. As I browsed through my classmates' tweets, there seemed to be some great ideas and articles. Sadly, there was not enough time to actually read them. I look forward to having this network of information and continuing to be connected to fellow educators and technology users. I am not a big Twitter user, but if you are ever looking for some new ideas to refresh your day-to-day curriculum, it's a great place to start!
Last, but not least, was Rubric creation. Rubric creation is special because it covers both categories of difficulty and extremely useful. Rubrics can be difficult to create as well as extremely time consuming. However, I am so glad that we created them for our digital storytelling projects. It made me reflect upon the rubrics I currently use with my students as well as where else I would like to add rubrics in my teaching. Many fellow classmates agreed that they assist in clarifying expectations and communication between teacher and students as well as parents. iRubric was a great website that was user-friendly for creating my project rubric. I was then able to embed this rubric into my wiki page.
I am looking forward to utilizing the few skills I feel that I am solidly taking away with my 4th graders as well as taking that large, expensive book back to the library for good!
Cheers!
Hi Kelly,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts and reflection on EME 5050. I felt that you were very honest and straightforward with your feelings towards what you have learned. This made it easy to relate to. I also feel that it is difficult to write when a topic isn’t given. This was definitely a struggle for me as well during this course. I found that using a concept map like bubbl.us to be helpful.
Overall, I agreed with your post content. I also feel that I am not taking away many new ideas of how to use technology in the classroom with students. However, what I have gained in this course is the knowledge of how to use numerous technologies and ways that they can enhance student learning. Before I started this course, I was unaware of how many types of technology that students in their everyday lives can be used in the classroom, including blogging, social media, and even digital storytelling. This is mainly due to the fact that I rarely used or hadn’t used these technologies before this course. I can definitely understand your frustration if you knew about and have already used most of these technologies with your students.
Thanks again for sharing! Happy Thanksgiving!
Alexis
Hi Kelly,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love your picture of the light at the end of the tunnel! And a Creative Commons picture, awesome! Even thought you share some disappointments, it seems that you did really take away a great deal from this class. I agree that some of the reading was very dry, and it was hard to keep up with a lot of twitter feed material and such. What I did find, was that many Twitter posts did have a lot of the more of the creative lesson plan type of information that you may have been searching for. Some of the posts on Twitter and Diigo would probably be worth taking a second look at, and I believe we will be able to access these once the class has ended.
Yes, some of the class material was dry, but oftentimes that is how I find the "ground work" to be. I felt that many of the topics in here were laying the ground work for technology in the classroom which isn't always as exciting as the actual lesson planning.
I also have to agree that it was difficult to think of a topic when not directed to write about a specific one. I would find myself staring with "crickets chirping in the background" and nothing coming to mind. This was my first time blogging, so as you mentioned you were grateful for the experience but sometimes found it to not be your favorite, I also felt the same way at times! It has been a great experience, but one that I am ok with coming to an end.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
Kelly GT
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I would like to say I very much enjoyed your blogging and comments, although it may not have been easy.
As for the technology lessons, there are some great sites for STEM lessons in the diigo group. One thing I took away from the class was how to search social resources on the web. If you haven't joined the tech ed group on diigo, I would do that too - people from all over post great little gems. :-)
The Twitter feed was a little overwhelming for me, especially when people would post five things in a row… I liked diigo much better, and plan to keep using it this year.
I agree that iRubric was very helpful as well. Before I had been using Rubistar, which was very limiting and frustrating. Although iRubric took more initial time (of which there is very little for teachers) it is probably worth it for larger projects.
I hope you have a great last day of break!
-Hope
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI too found the reading a little dry but realized if you did not know some of those computer details, it was probably invaluable for your tech teacher education! I found it interesting that you were overwhelmed by the Twitter feed. Though I did not look at everything that everyone shared, I liked the concise manner in which we had to present (140 characters). It gave me just enough info to know whether I wanted to read on or pass.
I too found little things I will take into my classroom and definitely appreciated the vast amount of technology we were exposed to. I'm thankful to have others who were blogging for the first time and shared my frustrations but also glad to have tried out this new type of communication. Do you think you will keep blogging or abandon? I haven't decided! Good luck in whatever you choose to do and have a lovely end of term and holiday.
-Marissa