1) I have learned a LOT in this class. First things first, BLOGS. If there is anything I learned about it was blogging. I NEVER understood the point until taking this class. I always thought it was useless , pointless, and some people just didn't have anything else better to do!!! I WAS SOOO WRONG. I learned that just one blog post can travel all the way around the world just by people commenting and seeing it and make a difference is many educational minds. I learned that there are several students that are learning to blog and we got the opportunity to boost there learning experience by just a simple comment. There are so many things I could say about blogging but I should move on... there are way too many things to talk about.
Google Docs. Well, I have used that in a separate class and I am sure I will use it many more times to come!!! It was so useful and I had no worries of it not being on my flash drive or the cd not working. All I had to do was save it, pull up the web, and present. I am so glad I was introduced to this tool. I will use it a lot.
Picasa, I was already familiar with picasa because I use it to play around with my pictures. I did not know how to resize a picture until you taught us how. So that was very helpful.
Podcast and Videocast. New, very new to me. I did know that some of the teachers from back home one or two of the younger teachers are using podcast to let the children read off the daily homework. After doing our podcast and having listened to students that are experiencing podcast I think this will be a very helpful tool to use also. I like the idea of videocast because it allows the students to get used to talking "infront" of the camera , and could possible prepare them for future speeches and classroom readings maybe?
The most influential post that I watched was Did You Know... There were so many facts in that video that blew my mind. The ones about how many users are on Facebook and Myspace is amazing. I knew a lot of people used those two networks a lot , but I had no idea that many used them. Also, the children that were singing the Fleetwood Mac song. I really enjoyed that. I just got chills knowing from one video those children got to experience something many won't!
Google Earth blew my computer up. I never got the chance to use it because everytime I tried to open it my computer froze up and wanted to shutdown. YouTube has been popular for a while. Although, I have never used YouTube for educational purposes but from now on I will know that the information is also available on YouTube. I knew iTunes had a lot of different books and what not available for downloading , but I did not know anything about iTunesU. To know that there are classes being held through iTunes is really enlightening. Unless I have just totally misunderstood the entire concept. The world Foliotek scared me at first. I have gone all semester without any clue how to do any of the uploading to certain standards. It scares me to know I have done work all semester and one program that has nothing to really do with the school work can allow me to fail a course. That is scary!!! Thanks Dr. Strange for sitting down with us and walking us through the process to make sure we did everything right. There are some teachers who will not even mention any instructions they will just say call the Foliotek expert. Once I finally figured it out , it really was not that frustrating after all though.
2) I learned a lot in this class that I did not know the day I walked in the door. I would not even know what to mention I would like to learn because I don't know of anything. I would have been a little more interested in how to edit videos. That is about it though. I know how to upload videos but I have no idea how to edit them or any of that. Other than that I am sure we covered so much information there would not have been room for much more during the semester!
3)There is nothing that I ever learn that I wish I didn't learn. Everything we learned this semester will be very helpful in my future classes , and they will also be helpful when I become a teacher.
4) I was never excited about blogging only because I had another class that I had so much busy work to do I just had no time to spend on thinking about things to type up and chat about with other people. I was excited about the skype call to room 10 I think it was . That was a lot of fun to me! I loved being able to talk to children all the was across the world!!!
5) I didn't find anything intellectually challenging. Everything was just mainly time consuming!!!
6)The only time I was bored was when we had to watch the long thirty minute videos to blog on. It just lost my focus and was not important to me!
7) I would only change so many things going on at one time. There were always things added and I got so lost at some points. I probably still did not get it all done. Other than that I enjoyed the class. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I would have taken it when I was not taking this one other class that kept me emotionally and intellectually drained!!!!
8)I would say I am more technology literate than I was when I walked into the class. I know how to blog , and links and pictures to that blog, I know how to use twitter, I know how to skype, I know how to do podcasts videocast. I would say I am good right now, only because I know how to do these things I am not excellent at doing them. I know there is so much more to learn so I will probably never be top notch tech literate!
9)I will try to keep up with Twitter. I know I will continue to skype. Also, I will keep up with the people that you have introduced to us and keep up with their new ideas at all times. I know I will be practicing more through Google Docs with presentations that I have to do in future classes. I may also continue to blog every now and then just to see if anyone is still watching!
Thanks Dr. Strange!
