Final Reflection Project

During the course of this class I learned many new and interesting ways to use the Internet to my advantage while teaching. If I had to choose just one of the different discoveries to continue using I would have to pick the social bookmarking. I felt that this could really help keep my students learning at a higher level. I could use it to showcase new materials found on different websites, while being ever mindful of the vast amounts of inappropriate material online today. Social bookmarking is also good for personal use. I find it incredibly annoying to be home and not remember a website that I have bookmarked at school. Therefore, if I had to pick one technique, it would have to be social bookmarking.

I feel that this course has aided my lifelong learning in a few ways. First, I feel that it gave me some new tools to use. I new basically nothing of social bookmarking, Webquests, and have done very little blogging. I would not have stumbled upon some of these unless they became popular later on. The second way it helped me was that it showed me that I did not know a whole lot about the Internet after all. I figured that I was 23 and understood most of what the world wide web had to offer and now I know that I was mistaken. This helps me to ingrain the fact that from here on out I will need to keep myself computer savvy to make it in the teaching business.

As I have stated already, I have been surprised by this course. However, it was a good surprise that will really make me think about what is to come in the future. I now know that I won't be able to just coast along with what I know about the Internet. It changes a little bit everyday and will probably never be the same for too long. I need to make sure that I can keep up with it even though it is ever-moving. This should make me a better teacher in the long run.

I enjoyed the format of the course as it was very simple to understand. Many of the online courses I have taken were often formatted in such a confusing manner that to understand the class seemed like half of the work. I enjoyed how the new assignments were not posted too soon, that would have just been extra clutter in the way. One thing that I would do to improve it would be adding in a final project where the students found their own topic and created a presentation with it. It would be similar to this assignment's discussion board, only instead of one last blog and a discussion they use what they find to show an example to the other students.

If there was another class like this I would definitely partake in it. I feel that all too often I sit through classes or superintendent's days where none of the information applies to me. Right now with the state's literacy kick band teachers are often pushed to the side for the rest of the district to focus on literacy. It is very rare that I come across a class that is suited to my needs as a music educator.