Thus far, this has been the best course I have taken in years. Every week I come away feeling like I have learned something that can be directly applied in my classroom. Much of this is due to the fact that the course is hands-on, and taught by someone who is not only an expert on the topic, but is also an expert on how to teach the topic!
My fifth grade students love Thursdays. First, because they have one hour of art in the morning. Second, because I share the things that I learned in class. Knowing how to use the technology that is available to us has helped me become a better teacher. Through the use of technology, I am better able to differentiate my lessons. My students know how to use Inspiration to help them organize their thoughts when planning an essay, or taking notes on a chapter in social studies or science. They know how to access our classroom homepage to get updated information about school events, and homework assignments. They also know that while Wordle has great entertainment value, it can also be used as a diagnostic tool. During our mentor author unit of study we copied the text from The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco into Wordle and noticed that the word "Quilt" was substantially larger than the rest of the text. We discussed the reasons why that happened, then I tried the same thing with the students' pieces. One student wrote about Thanksgiving with her family. She wanted her audience to know that she enjoyed spending time with her family on that day. I can't tell you how hard she laughed when the word "like" was three times the size of Thanksgiving. "I think I need to use the thesaurus," was her reply. I am currently in the process of having Photo Story 3 installed on the computers in our lab, and our media specialist is already looking for inexpensive microphones. We are going to publish our memoirs using digital storytelling.
As for the rest of this course - I am looking forward trying everything.
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