Entering the month of November, I feel comfortable with the basics of the technology introduced in this course. Photoshop became immediately applicable in my teaching; my students were thrilled to see themselves transported to other backgrounds. Inspiration proved useful when I downloaded the 30-day trial and scoured their database for templates. Many of the writing maps come with outline versions, which makes them particularly helpful in that they meet visual as well as verbal learners. For instance, I used it to give a visual representation for a writing rubric. Blogging has been pretty carefree and I recognize now the appeal. It is relatively easy to deride the blogosphere because of its notorious narcissism, but such an attitude toward blogging is narrow-minded and unfair. The beauty of the blog is the ability to publish for an audience with the click of a button. As a writing instructor, this tool is invaluable because it is my responsibility to get students to understand the importance of point-of-view, audience, and purpose. With blogs, those facets are glaring.
Working with GoogleSites has been a strikes-and-gutters endeavor. Initially I was frightened by the terminology and the interface. Although I have been a Google user for years, their Sites program was not immediately accessible to me the way Gmail or Google Calendar were. However, with practice, I realized how remarkably user-friendly Sites is. I am excited to use the website not only as my portfolio for this course but as an asset to my resume and a venue to share work with other teachers. Sites allows me to embed GoogleDocs into the page so that I can easily share work that I'm doing with students.
For the remainder of the semester, I want to work on doing more to incorporate what I'm doing in class into the classroom. For instance, I believe that I can have a class website up and running for the second term of the school year, which starts November 15. I prefer using a website with my students to using a blog, though I know they are both useful. I would love to post a GoogleCalendar and to keep a section for publishing student work.
My judgment of the course so far is that it has been well-paced, balancing short-term projects with long-term projects, and that the suggested and mandatory readings have supported well the technological projects we are creating. Suggestions for Dr. Langran: If at all possible, I would want to have more lab time during office hours. Jerome has been an amazing graduate assistant, very flexible and helpful. I know that this has to do with availability, so I understand the challenges involved with securing time and having a supervisor. Aside from lab time, I love the course and look forward to the second half.
