Final reflection

This class has allowed me to become a more successful educator. I have learned about the importance of collaboration and the many tools for encouraging collaboration within my classroom and with my students. This school year has been a difficult year, as my class is filled with many clashing personalities. I have many students who do not work well with one another, and feel that they are better than others. I have. Students who do not know how to interact socially with other students as well, and I have students who would just rather work alone because they see themselves as better than others. Overall, the clash of personalities has been a struggle all year. I have learned that they are very visual and hands on learners, and when given the opportunity to explore and discover, they are more apt to putting forth extreme effort. Throughout this course, I was able to show the students how much technology can enhance your understanding and your learning. They just LOVED putting together the digital story, and let me tell you, I have never seen them work so well with one another, as they did with the third graders in Mrs. Klock's classroom. They were so excited about being a star in a video! This year I introduced them to blogging and showed them how. To collaboratively work with one another, and they seem to have a hold on the idea behind it, but of course there is much work to be done. I tried to put together a wiki for the students to use to collaborate with their reading groups about Charlotte's Web as well. Although this seemed to be more of a struggle than the blogging, I feel that in time, they would begin to understand how to use it. They seem to really love using technology in their learning and they enjoy when I use the smart board in the computer lab for interactive approaches to learning in all content areas across the curriculum. They are currently using a lot of technology with their state projects. They are using Microsoft word for typing their state reports and they are using it for creating a brochure about their states. They have been working on embedding pictures and text into their brochures to make them visually appealing. They are also working on a postcard project where they are writing about the different regions of the united states and importing graphics into the postcards appropriately. They have come a long way this year, and although I felt very overwhelmed throughout this entire course, I feel more confident in my ability to teach and implement technology into my everyday teaching. This semester has taught me a lot! My school district(principal) is very pleased with our digital story and she has given us nothing but positive feedback about the work that we have done this semester with our students, based on the course projects. I will say, this class is much easier if you have a classroom to use to help you create the projects and the assignments.