Sunday, December 15, 2013

Final Blog Reflection #ETLEAD


Amber Hanson
#ETLEAD

Final Reflection

Overall I really enjoyed this class.  Of course there were definitely hiccups along the way.  I especially enjoyed the first book we read: Teach Like a Pirate.  This is probably one of the best-required readings I’ve ever had to read in any of my educational classes.  I enjoyed it as it helped remind me about how important it is to engage students in learning.  It also gave soooooo many great ideas that I can use within my own classroom to hook my students and to really make my lessons meaningful.  Although I’m too busy right now, I really want to make a poster or two of some of the useful things in that book. 
            In addition to this text, I will say that I liked blogging as well.  While I missed a few, and wasn’t always on time.  I still enjoyed it nonetheless.  The biggest thing that got me on blogging was the due dates.  I found it extremely difficult to get blogs in by Friday night, as during the week I am generally too busy with meetings, sports, and tutoring to be working on homework.  I think it would have been better if the original post was due by Saturday night, and the reflection post due by Monday night.  This would give people such as myself time to research and create a quality blog posting and actually have it turned in on time.
            One aspect of this class in which I would like to address is the use of Twitter.  While I know some people absolutely LOVE it, I’ve always found it so difficult.  Anytime I attempted to partake in the Twitter sessions I felt lost in the conversations. And once I was in one, I had a hard time following it.  I really really really think Twitter is a poor program to use for class discussions.  But that is just my opinion. 
            Aside form the required blogs and readings I wanted to quickly mention my mentoring project.  I really enjoyed mentoring my coworker on using the interactive whiteboard in her classroom.  My mentee is now using the board daily and I feel that if I hadn’t been asked to mentor someone in technology, She may have never known how awesome it is to use the whiteboards. 
            Overall this class has been a positive experience for me.  I enjoyed reading about everyone else’s mentor projects, and got a lot of useful information out of them.  For instance, in Tracie’s project she shared a few ipad apps that were of use within her mentee’s classroom, including italk and a few others.  Although I only have 1 iPad within my classroom, I feel that as a result of her project, as well as Andrea’s (who also did a project using an iPad) I have a general idea on how I can implement the use of mine within my classroom. 
            Thank you everyone for the great semester, thank you Lee for all your support and help as well.  You all have been wonderful and I wish you luck as you progress through next semester in your coursework, as well as in your classroom!


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