Ms. Findel

Overall I really enjoyed this class. I came into the class not knowing what to expect or what was expected of me. Coming into this class I felt I had a sufficient knowledge of technology use and never second guessed my ability to use it and in my elementary school we didn't use a lot of technology so I never really thought about how I would integrate technology into my future classroom. Going through this class I came to realize that I was not fully educated about what it really meant to integrate technology into the classroom. The most valuable learning experience I had in this class was getting the opportunity to explore different applications and manipulate them to work best for what I want to teach and for the students I am teaching. This class has taught me that not all of the tools you will use as a teacher were made for educational purposes. I think the most valuable thing in this course was learning how to manipulate the tools to effectively educate students. With my Come to the Edge project, tools such as Twitter or Pinterest weren't created for a school setting or educational purpose but with an open mind, you can turn so many applications and media into tools to enhance the education process. I believed that I have grown most in my web designing skills this semester. Selecting the most important and appropriate information to put on the site as well as keeping in mind the audience. For my ePortfolio, I kept in mind that the target audience would be teachers, future colleagues or future employers. I kept the information on my ePortfolio professional, clean looking, simple to navigate and made sure it contained resumes, papers, and educational history. For my class website, I kept in mind that the target audience would be my students and their families. I made sure it had a fun look, was simple and to the point, was well organized and student friendly. I believe I need to work on the actual integration of technology into the lesson. I think I have a good idea of how to make certain medias work for certain reasons or content but actually having students use those tools for those reasons during a lesson is something I need more practice with.