Course Reflections

During my participation in Walden's Understanding the Impact of Technology course, I have learned alot about the types of Web 2.0 tools that are available for use in learning and how to use these tools. Blogging, wiki's, and pod-casting were all new things for me that I was able to gain experience with through this course. I have gained enough knowledge and experience with blogging and audio pod-casting that I can stop thinking so much about how to do them, but focus on how to use them with my students to enhance their learning. I gained at least some basic experience with wiki's and though I am still not very comfortable using them, I feel like I have some basics to explore the use of them further on my own.

A few ways in which I feel I can continue to expand my knowledge of technology integration include continuing my education with Walden University as well as doing more exploring on my own. I can work on exploring the use of wiki's further. I am also interested in experimenting with video capabilities and uploading video. I have a digital camera that takes video, but I have not yet tried to upload videos to the computer or to the web. Attempting to do this is one thing I want to try in the very near future.

My first long-term goal after completeing this course includes incorporating blog assignments into my curriculum to encourage critical thinking about the core concepts being taught. I have already taken the first steps in doing this by setting up a class blog page for my biology course and incorporated a blogging assignment into my last unit. I plan on slowly incorporating more blogging assignments into my lesson plans, by creating at least one blogging assignment for each unit. I also plan to create a course blog for Anat/Phys class and begin incorporating blogging assignments with them as well.

My second long-term goal is to explore additional use of web 2.0 tools in my classroom. I plan on spending more time exploring the possibilities of wiki's to see if I could find a way to use them in the future. I want to be able to create some sort of web page that students would be able to upload projects to or create projects on, whether that be through a wiki or through an actual web page, which is another thing I currently have no experience with. I am also interested in incorporating pod-casting into my lessons as well, but before I can do so, I need to do some brainstorming on how I would use the pod-casting for student learning.