Final Reflections

So, Where Do I Go From Here?

Wow!  It’s been an adventure the past 8 weeks.  I’ve learned more than I ever thought I could about how computers can be used in education and now I realize how much I still have to learn.  Thank you one and all for your support and comments.

I now can use the Read /Write web to put my photos on Picasa so that I can narrate them with Jing and put them in my wiki or share them through my social network blog. If that doesn’t get my point across I can always make a Youtube video to embed in my Ning or an Audioboo podcast.  If navigating my weblog is difficult I can make a screencast using Jing to show you how to find your way around Web 2.0.  To keep up on all of my postings you can link them all with an RSS feed aggregator so that they will all come to you in one place and you won’t have to keep logging in to all of the different sites.  Allow me to suggest a url to get you started.

I never could have done that before this class and now I can even though I still need a little practice and sometimes I use the help screens and search for a Youtube how to on the web.

From here I plan to use as much of this as I can in the second half of the school year.  I have already made a second wiki to use for a committee at school and did a presentation with it at a faculty inservice.  Everyone now has access to it and will use the information placed on it to help improve our student AIMS writing scores.  I also grabbed my laptop at school and captures photos of the firemen during their presentation to my class last week and then had students in my class recorded the event using Jing a few days later.  I’m on a roll now.  The more I use these programs the more natural they become and the more ideas I have for using them.

And the adventure continues.  I love to create and this is one more outlet for me to do so with and for my students.  The skills and knowledge I have learned in this class have been more relevant than most of the classes I have taken in the last 15 years.  It certainly will have an impact on my future teaching.  I also have been encouraging others to take the plunge and learn more about how to incorporate technology into education. I know I will.