Reflection

Ive been reading excerpts from everyone's blog today, and I'm starting to see a lot of similarities....

1. iMovie and Movie Maker are not as user friendly as it claims to be.

Everyone that attempted creating a movie found this to be tricky! (Myself included) For part of my curriculum class last year we were to create a 3 minute iMovie introducing a unit in mathematics.... and we only had one week to complete it! OMG! How did I manage to finish this? I have no idea! Eventually, I was able to figure out how to do it, and produced an awful first video attempt! Luckily we had a chance to redeem ourselves at the end of the semester, where the videos turned out a little bit better,but still far from professional.

2. Technology can be intimidating.

I bet that just about everyone in our class have had to face their fear of technology. We hear about it... it sounds wonderful... but when it comes time to applying it in creative and effective ways in the classroom... BAH! Personally, my "fear" of technology comes from lacking the computer skills needed to bring my visions to life. I want to create animations and movies and music and pictures and websites and .....The list goes on. The other problem is that most of us were schooled in a very traditional setting without a whole lot of technology. How am I supposed to know which programs to use or which lessons lend themselves well to technology? When I was in school, computers were only used for word processing and creating powerpoint presentations. (very seldom)

3. We now know and understand the essence of Inquiry and Technology in the classroom.

After 4 semesters of inquiry, I never understood the process of it until this course. Everyone rages that inquiry is the future of education... yet they dont teach us how to design inquiry, which components are necessary for inquiry or even which types of tasks we want to include. Inquiry has always been this "thing" that no one could clearly define. Even now as I'm starting on my inquiry paper, I am still having a hard time explaining what inquiry is truly about. I have always thought that inquiry does not belong in the mathematics classroom.... yet here I find myself creating wonderful lessons that not only cover all the parts of the curriculum, but is guaranteed to engage each and every single learner in my classroom. I had no idea how to do this a few months ago.

4. Despite the frustrations, learning about technology is well worth it!

I dont think anyone regrets being in this class based ont he amount of learning that took place. The course load was heavy and stressful at times, but the rewards were definitely well worth it!