From+My+Heart



WOW, I'm done with my wiki! And I want to tell you some things.

Frankly, I'm amazed that I was able to pull this project off at all. Before enrolling in this class. I never even knew that most of the Website building tools that I used in this project even existed, let alone how to use them. I knew about YouTube from my own Internet wanderings but never imagined that I could do anything except watch what other people have made. Now I have embedded several You Tube files onto my wiki and have even created a You Tube file myself with Photo Story! I knew about Google Earth because my friend had it on his computer and we loved to scroll and zoom with it all over the world. But I never realized that I could use it to create my own thrilling world tour! When I considered designing a weather diary lesson early on in the semester, I wanted access to a Doppler weather radar like I saw on the TV weather report but didn't know how to get it. Thanks to Google Tools, I finally have an online weather station that can be easily accessed at anytime by myself or my students.

I'm not yet to the stage of my teacher's training where I'll be studying how to create polished lesson plans that meet all of the educational standards for national, state, and district levels (that will probably come with my science content course and my third field experience that I will be completing about this time next year). Presently, I suspect that my lesson plans are clumsy, haphazard, and off the top of my head rather than truly systematic, comprehensive, and orderly. Once I'm more familiar with lesson planning, I'll probably come back to this site and totally revamp the lesson plans. It's not possible, of course, to cover ALL of the tools that can be incorporated into a wiki (there's not enough time in the semester and new tools are always being developed) so I'll need to keep finding out about new developments on my own. I am also concerned that after putting this wiki aside for a while and pursuing other projects that my wiki building skill will become rusty and that I'll forget a lot of the crucial steps before I decide to come back to building it again. I hope that I can find Dr. C's instructional wiki again for several years in the future in case I need to refer to it for guidance. At any rate, I am glad that this wiki is here on the Internet and that I (and anybody else to whom I give the address) can always find it again (particularly when I actually want to use it for a REAL classroom).

We're already 10 years into the 21st century, so it seems kind of silly to me that I would consider teaching in the 20th century. I've definitely considered this course to be one of my most valuable teacher training courses so far and the one whose techniques I'd certainly apply to my classroom. The only limitation I can see in implementing the 21st century classroom is that up to date technology is expensive and not all schools will be willing to invest in it, nor will all students be able to access it at home. The school where I completed my first field experience is impoverished and not able to afford a great deal of modernized teaching equipment. Many of the students live in homes where an Internet connection is an unattainable luxury. Sometimes, I may have to make do with 20th century technology in the classroom, and I'm glad that I'm familiar with the older ways as well.

At any rate, Dr. C., thank you so much for leading us on this adventure. It certainly changed me for the better and gave me a clearer vision as to where to proceed next as a teacher.