Reflection

I have to say that these courses could not have come at a better time. A couple weeks ago I went from teaching 1st grade for my 5th year, to being offered a full time instructional technologist position working with kindergarten through 5th grade. Of course I accepted and so begins a new journey. One of my duties as an ICT is to prepare the 5th graders for their graduation project, which is generally a technology presentation of a self selected topic. I am so thankful these courses shared multiple web 2.0 presentation tools, many of which I plan to use in my teaching. Another duty I will undertake is teaching the school faculty about web 2.0 tools they can use in their classrooms to encourage technology in everyday practices. Again, I feel like I learned a lot of cool tools to share with them. Figuring out how to use the tools was easy but brainstorming how to use them in an educational setting was sometimes a struggle for me. I enjoyed reading and reviewing others blogs to gain ideas and suggestions of how these tools can be incorporated.

A lot of my studies so far in the Instructional Technology program have focused on digital storytelling, videos, websites, blogs, and audio. This course had a different approach because it really broadened the spectrum of tools I was exposed to. I am surprised at how many web tools there are out there that I never knew about. You could almost Google what you need and a variety of free tools will show. I am excited to use what I have learned and explore more tools to use in my new technology leadership position.