My favourite module for this course was Module 4 where I learned about ThingLink. My teacher brain started whirling and I could see so many different ways to implement this tool into my classroom. It is something I am very excited to use in the next school year. I think it will be something my students will be excited to create with and give them the opportunity to link many other media types into one assignment.
The module that was the most challenging for me was Module 3 when we began creating our portfolio on WordPress. I have previously blogged on Google’s Blogger which provides a simplistic approach (which as a first time blogger made my life much easier). I found WordPress frustrating because of the number of options available and needing to learn the lingo to understand what was being modified. It also would open up a new window each time that something was published. Although I would watch the Q&A sessions, my screen wouldn’t always look the same as what was being demonstrated. After another colleague jumped in to indicate where the admin page could be found, which made things much simpler (Thank you Sheri!) Working through that process made me appreciate my students’ frustration when working with a new tool. Definitely perseverance was needed to accomplish the task.
The two tools that I would choose to use from this class would be: ThingLink and Google Forms. As stated in Module 4, I can see many different uses for ThingLink in my generalist classroom to have students do an All About Me, a life cycle/rock cycle in Science, explaining the historical significance of a photograph in Social Studies, creating a 5 sense poem, and many others. I hope to continue to discover new ways to use ThingLink in my classroom. I plan on using Google Forms as a get to know you to start off the year. I also do a “check-up” with my students at the end of every term to see what they enjoyed about the term, what they disliked and what their goal for the next term will be. Also as we hope to implement weekly math quizzes, the self-marking aspect to Google Forms will make this task much simpler.
Two tools that I would like to learn next would be:
Google Classroom – I’ve heard how useful it can be and as I will be sharing a class set of Chromebooks next year – I believe that this could be a very useful tool to help keep things organized and easy.
Book Publishing – As I teach writing as a part of the curriculum, I feel like having everything all together online would make things easier. No longer will pages be missing, writing be difficult to read, or editing virtually impossible to see. I will need to explore each of the suggested tools by Jennifer to see which fits the needs of my students best.
To expand my knowledge and online presence on Twitter. Rather than just being one who observes in the Twitterverse – I want to participate in an online Twitter chat by the end of August.
To learn how to create a mind map using one of the recommended tools by Jennifer so that it could be a new tool to use in my classroom – to be learned in the next week
To integrate a calendar with important dates into my classroom blog – to be set up by the end of the first week of school (Sept 9)
The most important thing that I learned in this class is to continue to persevere and use all the tools available to me to help achieve the task at hand. Although I didn’t have as many struggles as others in this course, it is still a good reminder to see what my students will encounter as they learn some of these new tools. I also think it’s important to keep learning and pushing myself through discovering courses like this one and taking the time to see what else is out there. As the tech world is constantly evolving, it is important to keep up with the latest.