From+my+Heart

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. ~ Henry Ward Beecher



 Wow...my wiki is finally done! Here are some things I wantto share with you. Doing this wiki taught me a lot of things about myself. I learned that I am more creative than I realized. I also learned that I can add technology to any assignment. Sometimes it was hard to fit in the technical components, but I used a little creativity and created a unit of lesson plans that I love. I also learned a lot about being a teacher. I learned that being a teacher is about being flexible. There were many times that I had an assignment all planned out in my head and when I went to put it together on my wiki I realized that I needed to change my opinion alittle bit. I also learned that being a teacher is all about the students and their learning processes. I tried to incorporate different learnig strategies into my lessons inorder to cater to the different learning processes I might encounter in my classroom. I learned most of all that being a teacher is about making a difference, and I learned that I can use technology to make that difference. I am the most proud of my Google Earth assigmnent. For me that was the hard one, and I realized in that assignment that it is possible to use technology with ANY assignment, you just have to make it fit, like a puzzle piece. And boy did I have to work to make Google Earth fit into a High School unit on Poetry! But, I did it and it was one of my best projects this semester. There are some things I would do differently though. I did my assignments on Saturdays, which left me almost no time for questions. If I was to do the class over again I would do the assignments in the beginning of the week. Also, I would probably change the research project from a blog to a Microsoft Word sheet. In my mind it seems to fit better that way. That reminds me, another thing I learned about myself is that there are certain technological things I like more than others. I loved putting links into Microsoft Word, and linking from my wiki, but I was really picky when it came to doing my assignment any other way (like the research assignment). Being forced to use different methods and different types of technology helped me to see the bigger picture, to realize that the things I didn't like might be appreciated by a student in my class who learns differently than I do. One thing I think will be an obstacle in my classroom is the lack of technology. Depending on where I teach, there may not be access to computers or smart classrooms to utilize my technology skills in the actual classroom. Because of this, I mostly designed my lessons to have assignments to be done at home, on the student's own time. Hopefully there will be at least limited technology wherever I am, allowing me to utilize what I have learned this semester to the fullest. This class has given me the proper tools to teach a 21st-century class, and I hope my classroom will reflect those tools.