Farewell

Wait, it is over!? You don't say! This class has definitely been one of the most challenging classes I have been a member of since I started college in Fall of 2008. I have doubted my will, and my abilities as a student more than once during this class. Yet, it has definitely been one of the most useful, if not the most. It has not been about the biology of cells, the War of 1812, 2+2, or writing informative papers. This has been all about bettering us as future teachers by giving us the tools to challenge our future students to learn to the best of their abilities. To encourage our students to crave knowledge and to go out there and learn as much as they can. Many times throughout this semester, I have wondered why, Dr. Strange, is so emphatic about us going on our own and learning. But now I understand that this is the same exact thing we will want to our students to do, for the not be bound and limited to the four walls of a classroom. That even when they leave our learning cocoon, they should be like sponges wanting to absorb everything around them.

I hope that one day when we become educators, and we find in ourselves in our at our schools lounge during our planning periods. We will share stories about EDM 310.

Honest Reflection

This semester has not been of an easy ride. This class has been so challenging, time consuming, yet rewarding. I have learned how to use many different tools. My favorite has to be Skype. I find it so useful. You can hold conversations with anybody around the world as long they have it on their computer. I could use this to have other teachers talk to my students as it has been done in our EDM 310 class. I plan on using YouTube, Skype, Picasa, and most definitely Google. I think Google might be the most useful of all. It is so versatile tool. It is not only a search engine, but you can do so much more. It can hold your documents, surveys, emails among many other things. I do not really think there could have been anything else or at least that comes to mind. There were so many great classroom tools that I cannot see adding anything else. Everything I have learned in this class has the potential of being useful. Some of them might be more entertainment based than educational. Google surveys, Vacaroo, Picasa might not necessarily be useful in a special education classroom, but I do not think we should discard them.

I would love to say that this class excited me but that would be a lie. I found it interesting just not exciting. This class was "intellectually challenging" because it made us look deeper at what people all over the world were trying to tell us. When we had to read other student's blogs we were challenged to see views different from our own. I did not have time to be bored with this class. We had enough projects to keep us busy. I believe boredom is the lack of having something to do and not being challenged. This class was plenty challenging. The work load of this will not change, and maybe it should not. Something that I would like to be added to this course is maybe for it to be a little more oriented towards Special Education. Some of the thing we learned are not really useful in a special ed. classroom. A project or tool that is geared for special education only.

I believe that I am technologically literate. This class has definitely made me so. I also believe that being technologically literate is directly related to a person's willingness to learn new things and to change. I was so unwilling to change my ways when I entered this class and now I am leaving a little technologically aware than when I entered. I will continue to be open minded about new technology. I will try to find new tools that are useful for my classroom. I will try and take everything I have learned and apply it.