I was initially very nervous about this class. At first I encountered some difficulties, and was encouraged to "problem solve," which initially was very frustrating to me, but soon enough I realized that I demand the same of my students. Nothing is more frustrating when a student comes to you with simply, "I couldn't get it to work..." to which my reply is always, "Did you try this? Or this? How about this?" It's important to preach what I teach. Self-learning and self-sufficiency is ultimately what we are teaching.
This class was packed. There was a lot to learn and time management was key in this sense. I do not think I was able to fully delve into each piece of new technology we learned, but I did certainly gain a better understanding of the really important ones: Kurzweil, Smartboard and Boardmaker. I am confident that I will be using this in my many teaching years to come and am happy to say I am comfortable with these programs. And I love prezi now, and so do my students. I think they are simply pleased to be presented with something non-linear like ppt. Hey, whatever it takes to keep them engaged!
The group work was a bit challenging. I did not really like coordinating all the information on the Wiki, and to be honest, all my groups just abandoned that method and stuck to email chains. It was hard to rely on everyone checking the wiki consistently, and there wasn't a way to decipher who was saying what. Yes, I understand that we could get fancy with it and make it easy to decipher, but honestly that was just too much work to simply communicate ideas. Again, time efficiency was crucial with the work-load.
Overall, I really enjoyed the class and definitely walked away with a lot of useful tools that I have already introduced to my classroom.
No comments:
Post a Comment