Final Reflection

This class has exponentially broadened my repertoire and has given me numerous ideas for using this new (no longer fandangled) technology in the classroom as I begin teaching math this fall. In my personal life, alone, I have made a blog for my mother to keep up with my life easily, a Ning social network for myself and my camping buddies to organize camping trips, used Jing recordings to teach my mother how to do things on the computer (which is terrific because I am in AZ and she is in AR), and I have used Audacity to record myself reading my boyfriend's favorite book so he can listen to me read to him whenever he likes (we loaded the mp3 onto his Ipod - he seems to enjoy it and he jokes that I talk too much lol). The real gem is how I'll be able to use this technology to aid me as a teacher. Blogs, wikis, Ning, Jing recordings, videos, podcasts, photos...it can all be used. I am most comfortable with blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, and Jing recordings and I believe each of them will be highly beneficial in my classroom.

I will be able to make blogs and wikis for my students and I will be able to post assignments, tutorials, examples, lessons, notes, and much more by creating podcasts, videos, Jing recordings, and posts/pages (depending on if it is a blog/wiki) within the blog/wiki. I have learned from this class how online learning should be and now that I have seen a highly effective way of teaching online I will be able to emulate it and hopefully see similar results. I plan to use this new knowledge to make it so that a student with online access can get as much help from my blog/wiki as he/she could if they were speaking with me directly. Before taking this class I didn't even hope for that because I had never seen it done before but now I know that not only is it possible, it is highly likely.

Thank you for your guidance, help, support, and feedback. The Jing recording I made as a tutorial for multiplying and squaring polynomials has already helped the student I currently tutor in Algebra. I can't wait to see how the rest helps my students in the fall.