Thing 23

This has been a wonderful journey filled with enriching learning experiences for me. I have benefited from not only working through each thing but reading the reflections of others within this group. My thinking has changed from technology being an addition to teaching to technology being a necessity for and in teaching. Our students needs are changing and our teaching styles need to change with them. The world is leaning toward online learners as we have been during this 10 weeks. Being an active learner not passive is also necessary to survive in an online environment. It has become necessary for us to teach our students how to become a good online student that is not afraid to get involved in online discussions or blogs with others in the course as a means of learning and sharing. Students of the 21st century are stimulated more and focus more on what they see. Using these tools to teach will allow educators to reach all the diverse learners that appear in our classrooms today.

I plan to pull as many technologies that I can into my classroom and provide my students with a blend learning experience. With the diverse population of learners that are now entering into my classroom I see the need to be more diverse in my teaching style by using different tools to teach. Varying the tools I use will allow me to reach all my students. These tools will allow me to provide personalized instruction and meet my students where they are while keeping their attention and focus while improving their learning experience. I am able to bring some spice to my teaching as well, I am very excited to be able to learn all that I can about teaching with technology. These tools will allow me to collaborate with teachers outside of my immediate area and learn even more. Over the years I have attended many workshops in the area of Science and received many tools to work with but none have made a greater impact or been able to reach more students than the technology tools. Each of these technology applications serves a different purpose. Many of them are able to be used together.

I will continue to learn about Web 2.0 Tools through MACUL Space which looks like a good place to share ideas and learn new things. Reading other educators blogs is a good way to learn about good resources without having to search the web which becomes time consuming. I value the opinion of other educators enough to take a look at the sites that they recommend. I plan to log on to take a look at this site each day to stay abreast of what is going on.

My biggest take aways from this experience is learning the importance of educator blogs and how to a active participant in a blog. Before I would just read a few blogs and not comment, but now I see the importance and benefits of being actively involved.

Thing 22

really like using a wikpage even though mine is a work in progress and I refer to it when necessary with my students. I have used it as an online closet and bulletin board for my course, so it is kind of messy but I intend to clean it up soon so that it is continuously updated and used. This has been a good place to post my syllabus and any other notes or announcements that students may need to refer to throughout the course. I can store website links here that will direct students to important information and websites to be used during the course. I have been able to place power point or podcast presentations for students to view at their leisure. I am able to control giving my students immediate access to everything all at once or as I pull and post information to the webpage. I can also give the students access to adding to the page. The two tools differ because a wiki can be edited and become a new page while a blog is like an ongoing chronological journal. It is more appropriate to use a blog when you want the information to be displayed in a chronological order. It is more appropriate to use a wiki when you don't want the information added to be in chronological order. Use a blog when you want the students to be able to view others work and make a comment on it and use a wiki when you want a more collaborative edit to occur or no edit at all both edits will happen without comments.
My wiki is @
http://www.chemistryonthebrain.wikispaces.com

Thing 21

I was introduced to wikispaces over 2 years ago and was amazed ate power a wiki has. I viewed several wikis and decided that it would be in my best interest as an educator to create one to use in my classroom. I was excited to see that I could use a wikispace webpage as a place to hold a wealth of information and assignments that I could electronically give to my students and they could access them anytime. I was enthused with the fact that I could also use the site to showcase student work for other students and parents to see. The only hurdle that might stand in the way of using my wiki would be lack of technology or lack of internet service for the students at home and sometimes with in the school. Removing the hurdles would be worth the fight, but in order to remove these hurdles the student must be equipped with some kind of technology device that would allow them internet access. I teach students from poor economic and social backgrounds that have limited technology in their homes. Some are able to access the internet by cell phone and some have computers but these barriers are hard ones to remove.