Thursday, December 6, 2012

The end has come

The time has come to say goodbye to the 2012 fall semester at Edison State College. It has been a great semester and have learned a lot. One class that I will take away a great deal from is this very one, EME 2040. During the course of the semester I have worked on things that I have never even heard of such as a pecha kucha, a pecha what? Yes, a pecha kucha. Other assignments that were tackled were a collaborative lesson plan, a wiki based on instructional strategies, and even a webquest. Each of these assignments/projects allowed for personalization and creativity which I so very loved. Given a rubric on how and what we would be graded on we were given full free space to create and present as we wished.Getting started on projects was not as easy as it seemed, even though we were given the topic how you wanted your message to get across or be viewed was the hard part. Anyone can create a boring lesson but when you start using images from Flickr or videos on Youtube, the possibilities are endless as to how you can improve your lessons all by the use of technology. When given the opportunity to work in groups such as for the collaborative lesson plan and final wiki project it was exciting to see all the ideas that everyone was coming up with for just one assignment, ideas that involved technology not just your basic simple minded worksheet. For the collaborative lesson plan I really enjoyed being able to use Google Docs to communicate with my fellow contributors. We decided that the best way to complete the project without running short on time and the fact that all three of us had different schedules and meeting up in person would not be possible would be to use Goggle Docs. I loved this tool! We could effectively communicate as well as see the work that been contributed which was helpful in making sure that all did their part. Not only did it allow us to contribute and communicate but also critique. If I had liked something I wrote but someone deleted it I could easily find it and return it to the document. Using Google Docs for our collaborative lesson plan made the project easy to do rather than stressful, the only thing I could possibly say negative about the project was the lack of direction, given a sample lesson plan questions were still asked as to the format to follow. Had it not been for Google Docs to effectively communicate and direct tasks our group may have been in trouble!  For the final project, the instructional wiki, I was not a super fan of this. Not for the project itself but for the lack of communication that went on. Only allowed to talk on the discussion board provided in the wiki I felt as though no one really stayed on top it to check the posts that had been going on. As to contribution I felt as though one person really took the reins as to who I can say but can the educator? Overall for the wiki the homepage looked great as well as my own which is i truly cared about since my grade was resting on it lol. One thing that I enjoyed and wished we did more of were the discussion posts. I enjoyed being able to express how I felt on a topic and see all the different responses from my classmates. As a future educator, assignments and projects learned here that I will take with me will definitely be the webquest and the geo-chaching. A webquest to learn about deep sea creatures ( I already made it!) or to learn the path/flow of blood or geochaching to find a fossil that lies in the dirt. Two projects that are not your typical class lesson. The use of technology for both of these will allow students to fully be hands on and possibly get a better understanding of their assignment all with the help of technology. One thing that I found out and will push for as a future educator is the SMART board! I can not wait to use it!

 Thank you Professor!






http://zunal.com/
http://www.geocaching.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://smarttech.com/Home%20Page/Solutions/Education%20Solutions?WT.ac=HPBtn1_Ed_072610

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