Mid-Course Check In

Thus far in TPTE 486, I have been exposed to numerous Web2.0 sites that promote collaborative, social learning. I have become more familiar and comfortable working with Macs and as a user on social networking sites. I have enjoyed and benefited from learning about sites such as Delicious.com, SmileBox.net, GoogleDocs (I really like having a google account), and blogging. I now see that blogging can be a good way to learn from my peers and educators in the future. I have learned how to use my flash drive to save my work, both pictures and word docs. I have also benefitted from learning how to share and edit with GoogleDocs. Brooke and I actually used GoogleDocs to write and edit a fact sheet we had to do for another class. Had I not been introduced to this program before, I would have just emailed her my work and thus, created two emails out of one document. Wikis and PBWorks are fun sites, I have gained a lot from working collaboratively with others in the elementary education program. I now have a ton of sites to reference as I begin teaching. Working on my Delicious wiki was also easy, my partner and I got to work individually on our own time and still see what they other had done. The one down fall to Wiki's is that only one person can edit a page at a time. It can be easy to kick someone off by mistakes, causing them to loose what they had written. Collaborative editing is new to me and I like it for the most part. However, I could see how some controversies could arise as people edit others work that they spent lots of time on. That part must be explained to the students, not to take Wiki editing personally. I have learned how to take a screen shot and upload pictures. There are so many different social networking tools that I find it best to pick the ones that work well for me and stick them. I like SmileBox and Wordle was very cute! I could see myself using it for a word wall in my elementary classroom. There is so much out there in terms of technology but one thing is clear, that I need to keep up with the changing times of technology. It is important for me to be able to connect with my students and this means that I will need to incorporate technology into my instruction.