6th and Final week post!

I have almost made it through another class! Yay :o) I am writing a course reflection paper and including this blog in it to show that I am willing and able to blog :o) This course has introduced me to so much technological tools that I feel I will never get to try them all out. I plan to perform the Google search that this class assigned to me in the first week which was to search for collaboration and learning tools. try it for yourself if you come across this blog and you may be as shocked as I was to find so many wonderful tools that are available to use for free and some that cost very little. It has been quite an eye-opening experience as I am sure it will continue to be as new technologies come on the market.

5th week post

This week was one of the most challenging weeks that I have had during the course. I had to make sure that I made a PBWorks wiki, a Ning account and a Facebook group. Some of these tools were not as easy as others and I found myself really not liking some of them, especially Ning! Maybe even moreso because they want to charge for what other sites are providing free. Even though it was a stressful week, I feel that I have really learned how to navigate in and around these different sites. Overall, I prefer PBWorks for ease of use but I did have prior experience with building a wiki site before this assignment so that may be part of the reason.

4th week post

I just finished reading the article "Minds on Fire" by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler. I found some really interesting science websites that I would like to try out with my high school science classes. The one I am most interested in is a site that takes electron scanning microscope images of insects that students can send in to a university. The site is http://bug.scope.beckman.uiuc.edu/. I took an electron scanning microscope picture of a fly when I was in college and I was so amazed that I kept it an saved it in a photo journal that I have :o) I am excited to be teaching at a time where there seem to be endless possibilities to become a more effective teacher and endless ways to try to reach my students and their interests.

3rd Week Post

This week I had a little difficulty with the online learning program. I thought I understood the directions to an assignment but I misunderstood and my assignments were not graded and recorded. This has caused me some undue stress. I guess it can be a challenge not being able to ask questions in a traditional classroom atmosphere at times. Waiting for email responses to my questions can be stressful, especially when I keep checking back and they have not been answered yet. I am learning patience from learning online that is for sure! :o)
I also learned a lot about social networking sites this week. I explored some Facebook applications that I did not know existed and I was asked to really think critically about privacy on social networking sites. I came to the conclusion that nothing on the internet will ever be private. People even have to be safe using their credit cards and hope that the people working for certain companies do not find ways to commit fraud with their credit card information. At least there is usually insurance through the credit card company. There is no insurance when you place information on a social networking site. Bottom line, be careful! People really need to think before they act and that is good practice for most things and situations in life :o)

2nd Week

I have completed one week of a 6 week long course with the title of this blog. In that one week, I have learned about so many new technologies and tools to use them that I can hardly remember them all. The following website is a great resource for many of the technologies that I learned about and many more that I still want to take a look at, http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html.
This blog is one of the assignments for this week and I will be adding to it for the remainder of the course. I think that I may use this blog for the rest of my Master's Degree program if I find it valuable. I would like this assignment to serve as an e-portfolio of sorts.