Final Reflection

What an incredible insight to some fantastic tools, some or most I had never heard of or even imagined they could exist. I always felt that I was very 'savvy' in using technology for myself and for my students - but PowerPoint, movie maker/iMovie; Videos, word processing, publisher has nothing on what I have seen and used.

I have even gone further exploring other tools that can be used.

I am lucky in the classroom that I have one class for three subjects (middle school) so I get to see them very often and this gives me the time to explore and use some of these fantastic tools in the class, but also have the students use them at home or in the library - outside of the class.

Some of the applications I have used/exposed my students to, who have been engaged in the activities are: Bubbl.us 9 for brainstorming; Xtranormal - to create a story in preparation for NAPLAN and then animatinf it; Glogster - to create an online poster about creation; prezi - to see if we can move away from PowerPoint.

I am currently looking at the EDU 2.0 application and I have my first lesson in this format tomorrow! Hope it all goes well. Other areas we are looking at with the year 7 is some Claymation; Google sketch up. All sounds al lot but the students take it all in, learn quickly or teach me and enjoy the activities.

This course has been a great assistance in a project that I am leading at school where we are looking at using Web Based tools to see if we can reduce the reliance (not take over) on paper based activities including note books.

A great journey that does not stop here as am confident that there are hundreds of other applications that I have not yet been exposed to.

I posted a comment on collegue Rachel Danos' blog spot http://racheldanos.blogspot.com/ in her introduction post. Rachel is working through the modules and like me I think she will be impressed and enthused of what can be used to engage the students

Module 10 - Learning Communities, Constructing Knowledge Together in Wikis

I have only just become familiar (not an expert yet) in Wikis and Ning. At school I am working with a small group of people on using a wiki in the classroom. We are currently trialling it in one class to see if it works before launching it across an entire year group.

Our next challenge is to create a Ning that will allow students to work collabaratively and share ideas on this terms assessment.

It takes some time to get things set up and do something different as well as get the students involved, but once they see how it works and comfortable they become engaged in the activity.