When I first signed up for the Learning through Technology class I was very apprehensive about it. The main reason was that I thought it was going to be another one of those here is a computer and all of its parts and here are word, powerpoint, and excel. Boy, was I TOTALLY wrong! This class was amazing and I am so excited to be able to actually use things that I have learned in one of my grad classes in my own classroom. Often times we sit in our classes and listen to all of these great theories and then when we try to implement them we realize that there is no way to actually use it. But I feel that I will be able to use tons of the things that I learned in this tech class. I feel like I learned at least one new thing every week. I actually found myself going home and fiddling with the applications we had learned about that night.
So as some of you know I am going to be teaching a new class this year...Space Science Honors level! I am really excited to start this because teaching this class is really enjoyable. The kids love this class because they have not been exposed to it very much and they love learning about space. But this time around I get to kick it up a notch! I was recently approved to make the class tech rich. I will have a mobile cart in my classroom with 25 MacBooks, full wireless internet and a printer. Throughout the term the students will be doing many of the things that I had to do this summer in my Tech class. This will include making their own websites with Google sites, sharing documents electronically, creating a blog site of their own to reflect on the things we will do in class, Twitter, Voice Thread, interactive whiteboards (hopefully if I can get it to work tonight!), WebQuests, Wordle, website evaluation, podcasts (listening to and perhaps making them), and Wikis. My hope is to be able to integrate technology into the content without taking away from the meat of the class. I want them to be able to use these programs/applications and learn space science at the same time. Ideally, this will be successful but as most teachers know things don't always work out the way we want them to. But I figured I would give it a try!
To Dave and the Ladies of EDU 533 thank you for making this such a great class! I hope to keep in touch with you all as you delve into the world of education! Best of luck on your future endeavors and remember...if we based teaching on the first year we would only have first year teachers! It does get easier...I promise!
