This class had taken me on an incredible journey. In the first part of this class, I leaned about all the reasons why technology is so crucial for the 21st century learner. We need to teach our students skills that will enable them to survive and thrive in a technological advanced global world. Furthermore, these students are technological natives; they have been fully immersed in technology since their birth. These students learn very differently than students of previous generations, therefore our teaching must change. So then I began to learn about which digital tools will enable us to integrate technology into the classroom and allow are students to learn in an authentic manor. I became very excited at the prospect of integrating these tools, yet I was a bit nervous that I would not be able to use these tools and implement them in a meaningful way.
This brought me to the past few weeks of this class, which started with this blog. I was not comfortable with the though of even creating a blog, and now with this second entry, I actual feel much better about it. I actually dare I say it, enjoy it! Another requirement of this class was to create a website using wikispaces. That’s right I had to create my very own website! Before this class began, I knew very little about wikis or wikispaces. I started playing around with the sites and began to see how these could be beneficial in the classroom and for professional development.
For this assignment, I decided to create a site that would serve as a as a literacy learning community for educators. I envisioned this to be a forum where teachers could collaborate on high quality children’s literature and its uses in the classroom. There would also be an area for a book of the month and a parent’s corner. I was extremely excited about my plan and was looking forward to beginning. All of my excitement quickly turned to frustration when I began creating my site. I had difficulties navigating the site and realized that I was unable to develop my website exactly the way I envisioned it. With time and practice, I began to feel more comfortable with the tools on the site and I was able to tweak my plans so my idea would work within the wiki site. Slowly, my site began to turn into something that I was proud of. I could not believe that my vision turned into a reality. True it might not have been exactly what I initially envisioned, but it turned into a collaborative work space that could truly help teachers and students. Please feel free to visit it a qualitychildrensliterature.wikispaces.com
I am now ready to take on another challenge. I am currently working on revamping a unit I created on the Holocaust to fully integrate technology. I plan on creating another wiki site and using digital tools such as Skype and blogging in order to enhance the students learning. I am again a little nervous about this project but eager to begin another new challenge.
