My experiences / classroom anticipation

This class was flexable enough to fit my lifesyle, and powerful enough to make a difference.




After hearing that I will be participating in the digital internship experience this coming fall, I knew I wanted to take a class that enabled me to gather resources and start building my ideas.

Originally I was interested in doing an independent study for ECMP 455, but am extremely happy that I was able to participate in the online community our class created. I learnt so many things not only from the instructor but from my peers as will. The class was flexable enough to fit my lifesyle, and powerful enough to make a difference.

For the most part I would consider myself to be fairly confident with computers, and perhaps use them more then the average person. Having said this, I had never heard of google reader or RSS feeds until this time. I am thrilled by the whole concept of having relative information come to me rather then searching sites regularly for updates. This tool has become my new source of information, and I find myself reading articles from my feeds more often then anything else.



Digital story telling was something I had heard of before hand, but this class encouraged me to open the doors and discover all the possibilities one could use it for. I believe that the importance of this lays deeper then the technology itself, but should be noted for it's ability to deliver powerful, effective presentations.

Blogging opened a whole new world for me, and although I had participated in similar situations before, was never nearly as involved and faithful to my entries. It becomes addicting, yet rewarding, to check for comments and feedback from readers. I definitely plan on continuing my blog throughout my internship and hope my classmates decide to do the same.

The last class, which consisted of the "Dream Team", was an inspiration for me. I enjoyed being able to see successful classrooms operate in a digital/global environment. I have always been extremely interested in technology and was contemplating my career choice the first year of university. I know that I am passionate about teaching and computers, so the fact that I can tie the two together thrills me.



After receiving some good advice from clearance, I now realize that this does not all happen at once and eventually everything will flow together and start to make sense. I am confident that I will do my best to incorporate a lot of these ideas into my future classroom, but it will not happen over night. For the time being, I will use blogging with my students in my internship and go from there. I also have signed up for a collaborative project for my rocks and fossils unit, which allow my students to exchange rocks with students from another country. This is one example of how I want to involve my students in a global learning experience, and make their learning experience that much richer.

As mentioned by Dean, my instructor, I should not force the technology to fit, but rather implement it wherever it makes sense. I plan on using this advice, and slowly integrating technology as I go along. I look forward to using these newly-acquired tools in my classroom--and if not in my internship, then my future teaching situation.