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.