Tuesday, April 28, 2009

What I Have Learned In EDM 310

I don't know where to begin! I have learned so much in this class, and agree that it should be mandatory for all students going into the field of education. We have covered so much material in such a short time; there are our personal and professional blogs, which I enjoyed creating and contributing to. I think the professional blog will be especially useful in my future teaching as an elementary teacher.

We also did our class presentations about ourselves in which we employed the use of Google. Another way we used Google was in our spreadsheets, where we learned about absolute references, loan payments, and databases. We also used Google Docs for word processing. What I like about Google is that number one, it's free, two, it's easy to access, and three, easy to use and maintain use of. It also has many options, like the ones we covered with our presentations, spreadsheets, and iGoogle pages.

Another thing we learned about in this class was Twitter and how it can be used for communication and the exchanging of ideas through the Internet. It's a great networking device for extending your teaching ideas and learning new ones along the way.

One of the first things we covered in this class were ALEX and ACCESS, which can both be very useful for teachers and their students in the state of Alabama. This is the first time I was exposed to either of these programs, and was really fortunate to learn about them early on in my educational career towards becoming an elementary teacher.

We also recorded a podcast in this class. I have never heard of a podcast before this class, so I was confused at first. After we did some research and practiced, I learned that podcasts can indeed be very useful for instructional purposes for my future students.

One thing that I wish we would have had time to cover would be the Google Earth program. I do not know how to use this yet, but certainly plan on learning. I'm sure I can teach myself, now that I am more confident in exploring technology for myself. I can see how it can be a very useful tool, whether you are a teacher, a student, or just anyone.

One thing that aggravated me about the class was the fact that we had to use this personal blog. I think it would have been more than sufficient to create a professional blog, which we can update and maintain as needed. This blog, however, I cannot see coming back to in the future. It has been rather a pain to have to update this thing twice a week! But I'm glad it's over, and I can definitely say I came away knowing much more about technology than I did previously.

2 comments:

John Hadley Strange said...

Ah, but it saves on paper!

Jacquelyn said...

That's true, good point:)