Final Reflection Assignment

Courtesty of: http://www.11toolssbisd.blogspot.com

Introduction:
This has been a very informative course.  I have been working with technology for over 20 years and I have been teaching computer networking classes for 6 years.  I felt that this would be a pretty easy course.  I was so wrong!  The course introduced me to so many tools that I had been interested in however, I never bothered to take the time to learn.  I just could never find the time.

What I learned:
The very first thing I learned was to create and use a blog site.  This was much easier than I expected.  I had a lot of fun adding to the blog each week and sharing my experiences with my classmates.  I am happy with the way it turned out.  I think it looks good, it is easy to navigate and it is a diary of my time in the class.  The inspiration software was another great tool that I can use to help my own children with their writing assignment.   Unfortunately, I cannot use it in my classroom but I was impressed by all the features and ease of use.  The most useful thing I got out of this course was the web tools assignment.  I was blown away by how easy it was to create tests and answer sheets with the Easy Test Maker site.  I have developed tests the hard way for too long.  I used to use Microsoft Word and fight with the formatting…not anymore!  The Rubric maker was also incredibly easy to use and I will certainly be using both of these in my course from now on.  One of the more interesting and challenging projects that we had to do was the group story.  Each of us had to add a paragraph to the story and pass it on to the next until the story was complete.  It was a bit intimidating but the story turned out to be interesting and it made sense!

Weak and Strong Points:
My weakest point of this course was using Google Docs.  I found the idea of the site to be much like Microsoft SharePoint, however, it was not as easy to use and it was not friendly to Microsoft files that you upload.  I found you are better off converting the file to a pdf format if you wanted to have the file displayed properly.  When you let Google make a Google version of the file it came out all wrong.  If you choose to use the Microsoft file, it didn’t display properly so you had to inform those you shared the file with to download the file to see it displayed properly.  Overall, I was very disappointed with Google docs.  The only upside was that it is a free service.  My strong point was the blog and the movie assignment. I never created a movie like that before and I found it extremely easy and fun.  I will be using that application a lot more in the future!

Interaction with Classmates:
The interaction between my classmates and the teacher was acceptable.  Dr. Wang was always responsive to email and the serious students were very easy to communicate with.  I found the group project to be challenging.  The time allotted was a big factor and some of the students would not return email and others waited to the last-minute to submit work.  I ended up having to complete an extra part of the project to ensure the group as a whole got full credit.  One student never did participate.  The story was proving to be a challenge to post correctly but Donna B. and I worked together and managed to get it done!  I did find it rewarding, however, when the week was over!

How I Communicated with my Classmates:
There were several ways to communicate with each other in this course; however, I only used a few of them.  We had Google mail,
blackboard mail, discussion board, chat room, voice board, live classroom, and the Blog site.  I used Google mail, blackboard mail, discussion board and the Blog site for communicating with my class.  I really didn’t find a need for any of the others.  I had some problems with the blackboard mail forwarding mail to my Gmail account and several times I tried to send messages to classmates or reply to classmates with Gmail, I would get undeliverable message notices.  This was very frustrating.  I liked the discussion board.  It worked great and I had no problems posting my work or replying to my classmates posts.  The discussion board was one of the better options for communication in this course.  I really enjoyed the blog.  After exploring the site and becoming familiar with the options, I was able to customize the site to my liking.  I am still trying to think of a way I can incorporate this into my course.  I think it would be a great way for the students to showcase projects.  I used each of these tools equally.  I found each had a particular function and used them appropriately.

Bottom line:
I learned about and used an incredible amount of new tools that will no doubt make me more efficient and effective in the classroom.  My students will certainly benefit from this new knowledge.  It is so critical for teachers to keep up with technology and understand how it can be used to make their job easier and provide their students with technology that will enhance their leaning experience.  I am also, recommending this to my fellow instructors!  Great course!