Week 7 -- EdTech is OVER

Week 7 is finsihed -- at least I hope it is! Even right up to the last minute there was confusion over assignments that were in our original list that weren't in the assignment drop box. If that sort of detail can get ironed out the next time around I think the experience will be more pleasant for everyone! There needs to be a clear list of when everything is due and it needs to be correct right from the start! All of the confusion added a whole layer of stress that just didn't need to be there! I enjoyed learning all about the technology side of teaching and I will take away a lot of great ideas, I just wish the class could've been executed a bit better.

As for the content of week 7, I love the idea of digital portfolios and will definitely try to incorporate something like that into my classroom. But the lesson on Excel was just a waste of time. I've never touched the program before and I still don't feel like I have any kind of grasp on it! But I did get very good at following instructions from a video and learned how to pause and rewind so that I could get all of the steps correct!

Have a wonderful holiday season and see you all in January!

Week 6-ish

I'm a bit late posting my reflections about week six since I am in the midst of grappling with week 7, but oh well. I am excited about investigating what kinds of games I would like to use in my classroom -- I think they are a logical extension of the board games I used to play in school. It was interesting learing about the Google game and I was a bit disappointed that my web presence is so small, but I'm sure that will change. I added a couple of meta tags to my website a couple of weeks ago, so now if you Google Jarvis Academy my site is the second result -- so that is cool! The APA stuff is interesting but a little tedious! In the free-wheeling world of Web 2.0 does anyone really care if you put an ampersand between the two authors when you cite them?! I think having some sort of citation is necessary but all of those rules are ridiculous for most elementary school settings.

I am still frustrated at having to figure out most of this stuff on my own and wished that the class met a few times, but I'm glad it's almost over. I hope we aren't on to Web 3.0 by the time I actually get in a classroom and all of this stuff we're learning isn't out of date!