SUMMARY OF EDM 310 FALL 2009

Blogging has taught me a new way to communicate, share, and get feedback from people. It will be a useful tool for me to communicate with students, parents, and other professionals to learn new things. Also, I can share informative and tutorial websites with parents and students to promote their educational growth. Presentations have given me a new technique to use in preparation for English literature. I can introduce pictures, places, thoughts, and other ideas to the class prior to the lesson. Google docs can be used to have an e-mail, assignments, and other educational material accessible at any time. Podcasts can be influential in encouraging students on specific topics by listening at students and others opinions. Also, students may get the opportunity to create a podcast. YouTube will be excellent for researching educational videos pertaining to topics discussed in class and can reinforce my classroom instruction. Personal learning network (PLN) is a useful tool to obtain, share, and stay current on educational material and ideas as it arises. Also, I will add Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX) to my PLN to assist me with lesson plans. A part of being a teacher is to be willing to learn and I will maintain contact with my PLN group as a part of this learning process. Twitter is being used by me to assist in maintaining part of my PLN group. Comments 4kids is a fun way to communicate and share ideas with students across the globe. Educational materials can be obtained through iTunes and iTunesU. Accessibility and the use of html tag modifiers will be a factor in my class. I will create a questionaire using Google forms at the beginning of the term to see who has internet accessibility. The ones who do not will be given ample time to complete assignment requiring internet access. Also, in my blogs and e-mail, I will include links to take students to the sites of my choice. Google Earth can be used to give virtual tours of locations and places discussed in the text. As an English teacher, I will encourage and assist students taking college credit courses through the Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide (ACCESS). Technological literacy is very important to the future of schools. As previously discussed in this class, reading habits of students are continuously deteriorating as schools are becoming submerged in technology. Currently, I am at the beginning of my intellectual trail and have a long road ahead.
2. Google Earth and Pecassa was introduced in class, but I wanted to learn more about them.
3. I do not regret anything I learned in this class. I really appreciate the EDM310 experience.
4. The introduction to Google Earth was exciting to me and I plan to explore it in greater detail in the near future. I enjoyed doing presentations with pictures and I plan to use Pecassa. The entire class was a very exciting experience. I got internet access at home about a year ago and was not aware of all the things it has to offer until this class. Also, it was exciting to me to learn how to search the internet for information.
5. I felt like editing html tags was "intellectually challenging." I played around with it for a long time before I could figure out what the problem was. My instructional videos would play sounds and not show pictures. So, I could hear Dr. Strange's voice, the clicking of the mouse, and no sound. I read the instructions and that was not successful. Html's looked like a foreign language at first and many of the letters and symbols were very similar.
6. I was not bored at anytime in this class.
7. I would not change anything in this class.
8. I am somewhat technologically literate to a medium extent.
9. I will maintain my technological literacy by checking educational websites I am following on Twitter and searching the web for other sites to add.